Book and National Bookstore Essay

Goodwill bookstore is a 100 percent Filipino firm and is one of the Philippines’ first, having started in 1938, and currently one of its largest bookstores. For several decades now, Goodwill Bookstores has been consistently in the Philippines’ top 1000 corporations currently servicing over 5,000 regular outlets all over the country. Goodwill Bookstores lead all other bookstores especially in the field of medicine offering such books as Harper’s Biochemistry, Ganong Medical Physiology and Robbin’s Pathological Basis of Disease. Goodwill is the exclusive Philippine distributor of big foreign publishers such as Appleton and Lange, McGraw-Hill Book Co. , Lippincott-Raven. Although, there are a lot of bookstores in the Philippines like Merriam-Webster Bookstore, Goodwill Bookstore, and some other minor bookstores and booksale stores, National Bookstore will stand out. National Bookstore is the largest chain of bookstore in the country and one of the oldest. It was established in the 1930’s in Manila. The bookstore did not start as big as it is now. It is only a small stall selling textbooks and school supplies in the street of Escolta, Manila. The bookstore was destroyed twice, first, when the whole of Escolta was burned down during the Japanese era, and the second was caused by a typhoon in 1948. The most famous bookstore in the Philippines and also the largest with 92 branches and still growing. It is located mostly on shopping malls. They also sell school and office supplies. They also sell books online and delivery services. The bookstore called Bestsellers is also owned by NBS while National Bookstore is the largest bookstore chain in the Philippines with 92 branches in the country. It was set to open its first overseas branch, in Hong Kong, in September 2007. Through the hard work and powerful leadership of Socorro Cancio-Ramos and the late Jose Ramos with their family, the company has evolved from its humble beginnings into the biggest and strongest bookstore chain in the Philippines. 1. Over sixty five years of focused energy has brought National Book Store to where it is now: the pinnacle of the bookstore industry in the Philippines. More than that, the National Book Store family takes pride in its role as an institution that supports education and enhances lives by providing the best and widest selection of educational, professional, and social communication products. The values that took Mr. and Mrs. Ramos through adversity—hard work, shrewd business skills and a strong sense of social responsibility—remain the driving force for the whole Ramos family, their 2,500 employees in over 120 branches, and will keep National Book Store ahead in the next century. While fully bookstore our A2 Economics revision workshop at Fulham Broadway on Tuesday 30 November 2010 is now fully booked. Too many businesses mindlessly and lazily copy the market leader and each other, creating a blur of homogeneous, me-too offerings. That is why most businesses fail, because they are not able to stand out from the overcrowded marketplace. In this book, the authors share highly successful and practical strategies that they and other thriving entrepreneurs have used to great success. The book is co-written by Thomas Fernandez, Chairman and CEO of one of Singapore’s largest and most successful pests Control Company, and Sant Qiu, a highly sought-after Profit Strategist who has helped his clients radically increase their profits within a matter of months. Most other business books are either filled with complex textbook theories or inspirational success stories without revealing the truly critical information of how they actually did it. That’s where Secrets to Dominate Your Niche is different. It provides specific powerful differentiation strategies that the reader can immediately apply in their business today. These are supplemented with highly entertaining real-life case studies drawn from both authors’ experiences, keen observations of the behavior of the marketplace and actual big name entrepreneurs who have achieved success in their respective niches. For instance, in page 235 of the book Thomas reveals how he clinched a coveted major contract with a well-known 5-star hotel in Singapore, his company’s first major client, in spite of being the â€Å"unproven† newcomer in the pest control industry. He did this by using one of the strategies detailed in the book — offering a gutsy guarantee. The book also tells the reader how they can use this strategy in several different ways. And if the reader has the guts to put all the strategies to good use in their business, then one of the not-to-be-missed chapters shows you how to pit yourself against the market leader in your industry and come out tops. In the chapter Differentiate By Polarity Positioning, the authors explains why picking a fierce fight against the biggest competitor can be a smart move to quickly gain market share and establish your brand. (Hint: this is what made Apple Inc extremely successful.) The book contains specific, sometimes contrarian and radical strategies of how a business can differentiate itself in many ways, such as being a leader, being a specialist and even by charging premium prices. The authors show that these strategies really work in the real business world by citing proven examples of how these have been used successfully by other entrepreneurs as well. What’s most refreshing is the fact that they unselfishly share these â€Å"niche domination secrets† in detail and break them down into easy-to-follow steps. Readers will also find nuggets of business wisdom in the form of Success Keys in the second chapter, which details ways to develop the right entrepreneurial mindset to succeed; as well as management and R&D tips to grow their company in the last two chapters. Any businessman or aspiring entrepreneur would certainly benefit from these insightful â€Å"secrets† to gain market share and increase their profits. It is no wonder that well-known local entrepreneurs like Elim Chew, Douglas Foo, Adam Khoo and Lawrence Leow enthusiastically endorse this book. Even educators from prominent institutions such as SMU, Cornell-Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management and Singapore Polytechnic have given the book rave reviews. It has even garnered international praise from business gurus such as Brain Tracy and Michael Weissman. They have hailed it as â€Å"a must read not only for entrepreneurs but for leaders of organisations† that will become â€Å"a bookshelf reference in our libraries†. Powerbooks opened its pages to the public on August 16, 1996. Amidst the drab and routine of ordinary bookstores, Powerbooks merged the passion of a literary salon and the sensibilities of a good bookstore. It provided ardent book lovers with a perfect mix of a cozy reading ambience, a coffee shop and an accessible good book to fulfill whatever fancy they may have. With a selection of almost 200,000 titles (and growing! ) from different genres, PowerBooks gives its patrons the most relevant selection of books at a competitive price. Book sale is increasing their market share tripled in the last six months because of the sales of the hardback book, and it has now topped the list as one of their bestselling products. Merriam & Webster Bookstore the two firms declined comment on the possibility of a sale, but Merriam-Webster’s market value was estimated in the business press between $20 million to $40 million. Sales performance Goodwill bookstore and/or other intangible assets are present in every business and they should not be discriminated against given their direct relationship to profitability and financial and operational performance. It is a feature of our modern service and information economy that hard assets are less and less important as time progresses. In fact, even those businesses considered to be hard asset heavy will feature goodwill values of at least 45% and often much higher (more profitable, more goodwill – get the idea). Actual statistics related to real world business acquisitions are provided next in order to document this fact. Goodwill’s workers certainly have no complaints, judging by their loyalty to the company. â€Å"We’re like one big family. The employees chose not to [join a union] because I think they’re satisfied and happy,† says Suplico, adding that the company has a low employee turnover. Goodwill management offers benefit schemes to employees based on competence. Depending on company and individual performance, the management provides financial perks and training while National Bookstore rapid growth and expansion can lay some tough demands on even the most successful enterprises. Such difficulties weren’t lost on National Bookstore, the Philippines’ biggest retailer of books and office supplies. As well-stocked branches of the store mushroomed around the country in the early 1990s, the resulting higher purchasing costs had to be addressed by integrating its entire supply chain. As an emerging retail giant, National had been aggressively launching new branches, and even new store concepts, such as PowerBooks and Office One Superstore. Such expansion begged for robust information systems that could provide critical decision support—from tracking company sales at a moment’s notice to monitoring inventory to the last item—delivered in time, of course. National thus undertook a strategic I. T. initiative in 1996 to streamline its retail operations and also improve the quality of in-store service. By aligning its I. T.  and business objectives, National was ultimately hoping to get a good return on its I. T. investment. The company initially hired international consultants who evaluated the stores’ needs and long-term goals, developed a technology roadmap and recommended appropriate applications software. Hardware selection was just as judicious in view of universal worries over runaway operating costs, including expenses for managing upgrades and maintenance. NBS chose to address the total-cost-of-ownership issue by standardizing its store automation platform on a single solution from a single vendor. Fully booked In business terminology, a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measurement for gauging business success. In Analysis Services, a KPI is a collection of calculations that are associated with a measure group in a cube that are used to evaluate business success. Typically, these calculations are a combination of Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) expressions or calculated members. KPIs also have additional metadata that provides information about how client applications should display the results of the KPI’s calculations. A KPI handles information about a goal set, the actual formula of the performance recorded in the cube, and measurement to show the trend and the status of the performance. AMO is used to define the formulas and other definitions about the values of a KPI. A query interface, such as ADOMD. NET, is used by the client application to retrieve and expose the KPI values to the end user. PowerBooks The sale performance is profitable if the sales funnel worked. The sales funnel describes the actual conversion of prospects into sales. It is called as such because it includes the conversion ratio at each stage of the sales cycle, which has a funneling effect. Also, it is profitable if the impact with high-level executives is strong. Getting valuable time with high-level executives, knowing what to do and say when you’re in the meeting to ensure the most impact at the executive level, and winning the approval of key executives at the end of the meeting. With telemarketing on the rise and an increasing number of people screening their incoming calls, phoning a prospect and hoping to get an appointment with him or her requires new techniques. It can cost four times as much to sell to a new customer compared to an existing one. By taking advantage of existing relationships and ongoing contact with customers, companies can sell more products and services, reduce the cost of sales, enhance customer loyalty, and drive revenue. PowerBooks transports beyond paragraphs and chapters. Reading is not merely a common action in PowerBooks; it has its reputation as we said awhile ago; it has an experience of enabling the limitless journey of the mind, which every book lover takes in the process of reading. As PowerBooks continues to expand, with volumes upon volumes of stores like its books, customers can be assured that PowerBooks will always be spearheading innovation as a part of its growth, catering to the constantly changing needs and interests of bibliophiles in every PowerBooks store. This only satisfies that their sale performance is profitable. A book sale sale performance of Book Sale is not too good because based on the graph their sales was become lower than the previous sales so, their profit was becoming lower. Merriam & Webster Bookstore It boasted a wealth of new words from the fields of education, social science, and sports, and in particular from the tremendous scientific and technological revolution the country was going through, from which inventions and concepts, such as the telephone, the automobile, the phonograph, and the light bulb, emerged almost daily. Collegiate sales would grow steadily through the 20th century until by 2004 Merriam-Webster had sold more than 55 million copies, making it one of the best-selling hardcover books in American publishing history, second only to the Bible. Service The excellent services of Goodwill bookstore can accommodate needs quickly, effectively with experienced workers, always come through with the best. Specifically, we allocate the fair value of the wireless reporting unit to all of the assets and liabilities of that unit, including any unrecognized intangible assets, in a hypothetical calculation that would yield the implied fair value of goodwill. If the implied fair value of goodwill is less than the goodwill recorded on our consolidated balance sheet, we record an impairment charge for the difference. The Goodwill Bookstore is well-organized bookstore with neat shelves of old books. Goodwill book store generally stock all the books and other materials required in all the courses offered at the institution. Goodwill book store has kind and gentle customer service. Goodwill bookstore offers a low price of books. Goodwill bookstore provides added convenience to everyone’s book shopping experience. Goodwill bookstore has fair discounts together with various participating companies in the book & publishing industry. Goodwill book store people can visit your web site to buy and download your book almost instantly while the service of National Bookstore has served countless generations with high-quality reading materials at the most competitive prices. It has been instrumental in shaping young minds by nurturing children with books rich in core values and providing a wide array of academic titles and reprints for their education. National Book Store also offers every imaginable product for school and office use. From ordinary supplies to creative novelties, students and professionals in search of a particular item seldom leave the stores disappointed. Fully booked providing excellent service, both to external and internal customers, is one of the toughest challenges faced by every organization. Investment in products, technology, and systems can be undermined with ineffective behavior by front-line staff. Disallow negative talk about customers within the workplace. Forbid employees from talking about your customers in a negative light; this will improve their overall perception about the importance of the customer to the company’s success. This positive attitude will subconsciously transfer to a positive interaction with the customers themselves. . Record customer service calls. Listen to customer service calls to help determine several quantitative measures by which to measure customer service. There are time measures such as time to solve a problem or the number of issues handled within a certain time frame. There is also the ability to determine how many situations an employee has resolved with respect to other employees in a certain time period. Though, time is not everything in customer service if they are not being treated cordially. Use recorded customer service calls to determine which employees need further training on dealing with customers based on their tone of voice and direct language. Fully booked are extremely easy to work with. Their staff is friendly and efficient. In terms of service and the caliber of their staff, Fully Booked is the best agency. PowerBooks Big discounts on bulk orders Depending on your total purchase get as much as 20% discount. Free delivery for a minimum purchase of PhP 5,000, we will deliver your books to your company, school, or organization. Read Now, Pay Later Get to read and review books for free. Pull out books from our stores for a maximum of two weeks to assess at your leisure. Book fairsencourage the love of reading through exclusive book fairs. We’ll bring the latest selections and bestsellers to your students and employees. Powerbooks book fairs- the perfect addition to your events/activities. Easy Payment Terms Special payment terms for your employees can be arranged if they purchase books during our scheduled book fairs. The books that they have chosen can be deducted from their salaries. Convenient Purchasing of Books Now, you can easily purchase titles from Powerbooks. You don’t have to go to our branches. Simply order via email, fax, or over the phone. Book sale Book Sales provides sales & marketing for publishers wishing to command a presence in the important book markets, they also work closely with agents and distributors worldwide in order to be able to offer global distribution for English language titles if required. They offer a range of bespoke services to suit individual requirements, ranging from sales representation & distribution to the book trade through to a comprehensive marketing & promotion strategy. They develop long term relationships with their clients, working as true partners to develop and realize the full potential of their lists. Merriam & Webster Bookstore This store offers all items needed for school, offering top quality brands and affordable alternatives, giving customers’ freedom of choice. M&W may not be the most popular school supplies store but with the same array of items, lower price and shorter check-out lines, school shopping is stress-free. What’s more, they deliver for free within the vicinity for purchases of P1, 000. Good news for those who can’t carry home huge boards for projects or heavy loads of items for school opening. Most valuable products For the last 30 years, Goodwill Bookstore has always been one of the major booksellers during this most awaited event. Traditionally each year, Goodwill showcases its widest array of textbooks, references, pocket books, trade & children`s books and other quality reading materials both from foreign and local publishers. These are sold with huge book fair discounts together with various participating companies in the book & publishing industry. Aside from the usual book trade, Goodwill Bookstore and its affiliate, KATHA Publishing Co. , Inc. will be featuring special events & book launches. Providing added convenience to everyone’s book shopping experience, Goodwill Bookstore and Bridges Bookstore announce the official launch of their respective websites, www. goodwillbookstore. com and www. bridgesbookstore. com on September 16, 2009, the first day of the 30th Manila International Book Fair at 5:00PM, Meeting Room 4 of the SMX Convention Center, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City. The Great Recession has hurt many businesses in the past two years, but one benefactor appears to be Goodwill Books, the used bookstore operated by Goodwill Industries. The store at 6063 Park in Park Place Centre was launched in February 2008 and has experienced such strong success that it was expanded earlier this year. The bookstore recorded $78,000 in sales by the end of September. By comparison, the area’s only other Goodwill book store, on Goodman Road in Southaven and open since 2006, had sales of $101,000 in the same time frame. â€Å"The economy has helped the bookstore business where people who may not have shopped here before have tried it out and those who had shopped here may shop here more,† said Goodwill vice president of operations Dave Leutwyler. â€Å"It’s all about being in the right place with the right product. â€Å"Leutwyler expects the Park Avenue location to match the Goodman Road numbers as awareness of the store grows. â€Å"We think it’s a first-class operation and we’re pretty proud of it,† Leutwyler said. â€Å"It’s doing really well. â€Å"The location was first conceived as a much-needed donation center, although it became apparent that it was more room than was needed. â€Å"We wanted to generate revenue to offset the cost of the rent, and the bookstore was a good alternative to fill the space,† Leutwyler said. Customers are drawn from nearby restaurants, St. Francis Hospital and the Courtyard by Marriott next door. Many buyers grab and go, but there is also an area where browsers can sit and read. â€Å"We have a good product, terrific service and great customers,† Leutwyler said. â€Å"We get customers looking to get away from the hospital for a bit and travelers at the hotel. Sometimes, at the end of the week, a traveler will bring a book back that’s been bought to donate back to the store. â€Å"Eleanor Troutman has worked at the store since it opened, and said it now has 10,000 books on its shelves, including those in hardback fiction, trade paperback, history, biography, self help and, of course, Oprah’s book club. â€Å"The expansion gave us the chance to offer more of the categories our customers are interested in,† Troutman said. Each donation center is linked to a particular Goodwill retail store. For the Goodwill Books store, certain centers’ books — the cream of the crop — have been designated for sale at the bookstore. All of our stores still have a nice selection of books,† Leutwyler said. â€Å"Any rare or valuable books will go to the bookstore† while MANILA, Philippines – Dell Philippines broke out from the mold by being the first PC company to tap National Bookstore as a reseller. Traditionally, IT companies appoint seasoned computer distributors and dealers that operate computer shops in major malls to carry their products. Dell, however, believes computers are now undoubtedly considered office and school supplies that it is just right to be in the shelves of National Bookstore, the country’s oldest and biggest chain of bookstore Best Buy Pals was created specifically for the choosy and trend-seeking teens. This new product line ensures that teens have new and exciting designs of school supplies and accessories to choose from. The annual product calendar features books and school and office supplies available at the stores. Every year, new and exciting features are added to make the calendar a more useful and effective communication and marketing tool. Fully booked is one of the hippest and most visited bookstore chains in the Philippines. They not only sell the widest selection of books at reasonable prices, they care for the environment too. Fully Booked Gift Certificates allow your loved ones to choose the item that is perfect for them in any of our Fully Booked stores. Fully Booked Corporate Accounts aim to help your company meet its needs for books. Whether you’re looking for training and reference materials to stay ahead in a fast changing industry, building your company’s library or rewarding important employees or clients, we have the solutions for you. 10% discount on cash purchases and 5% discount on credit card purchases for all your company employees (once initial purchase has been made). Facility to order books not currently in stock. PowerBooks valuable products, Educational books, Children Books, Fiction Books, Dictionaries, Bibles, Magazines , Newspapers. PowerBooks Corporate accounts are comprised of valued schools, companies, and organizations that enjoy numerous benefits from PowerBooks. Depending on your total purchase, get as much as 20% discount. For a minimum purchase of PhP 5,000, we will deliver your books to your company, school, or organization. Special payment terms for your employees can be arranged if they purchase books during our scheduled book fairs. The books that they have chosen can be deducted from their salaries. Book sales through retailers fell in 2009, and overall bookstore sales have been treading water since 2003 according to the government (table below). The combined total for media sales (mainly books) of the Barnes&Noble and Borders chains plus Amazon North America and BN. com was $13. 5 billion, with all the gain comng from online sales. These sums include a couple billion dollars worth of DVD’s, CD’s, coffee and brownies that aren’t publicly broken out of the numbers. Barnes and Noble pointed out years ago in a conference call that â€Å"most† of their business is in stable backlist sales, and their most valuable asset is their real estate. They are trying to create new book selling realestate with their Nook eBook reader, and claim their share of the eBook market is now greater than their share of the printed book market. The decline in Borders North American sales accelerated in 2009, they opened no new superstores and closed many Waldens bookstores in malls. Amazon media sales grew at a healthy pace, thanks to Kindle and Prime. Merriam & Webster Bookstore They offer educational books, children books, fiction books, dictionaries, bibles, magazines, newspapers, periodicals, CD Center, Office Essentials, quality plastic covers of thick grades and branded pencils with sturdy lead that lasts the whole school year can be found here. M&W also carries textbooks from their own publication and selected publishers, art supplies and cutie character knick-knacks all covered in one stop. You can purchase Merriam-Webster’s high quality references through your favorite bookstore, office supply retailer, or software dealer. Choose from a wide selection of dictionaries, writers’ guides, readers’ references, and CD-ROMs. Moreover, the company was convinced that while dictionaries in various electronic formats, especially Web-based, might never fully replace print dictionaries, they would be an important means of dictionary use in the future. Finally, Merriam-Webster realized that to keep hold of its leadership in dictionary publishing, its dictionaries had to be accepted as the standard by which dictionaries were measured. M&W is saleable because this is not only impressive in terms of completeness, it’s definitely budget friendly. The best marketing strategy The month of July has been a dismal month for the bulls in the market. The downtrend occurred most of the time in the oversold condition. This makes it difficult to put on extensive short positions when the market is in that status. That is why having some short positions as well as longs is a prudent strategy. There will always be excellent short charts in an up-trending market and there will always be good bullish signals in a down-trending market. When the market conditions are such that the trend is not clearly definable, the use of candlestick signals can make a portfolio strategy easy to implement. Having the portfolio positioned with both long and shorts during indecisive periods in the market provides a format that will profit from being in some positions that benefit from the market direction with the possibility that the opposite positions may not move against the portfolio. At worst, the positions opposite the market direction should not move against the portfolio in the same magnitude as the positions profiting from the market direction. The signals indicate circumstances that move the prices in the direction indicated even though it is opposite the market direction, such as a short signal pushing a price down when the rest of the market is moving up. Is your business strategy targeting your best market segment? Let’s analyze how much the Top Market Strategy will multiply your sales and profit. You see, we are all created equal, but some prospects are more â€Å"equal† than others. If your business is typical, prospects in the top 20% will produce 16 times more sales and profit than other market segments. Do you want to predict who is in your top market segment? Learn how a universal principle governs your sales and profit. Salespeople readily see that many of their sales come from a few customers, but the most successful salespeople analyze how the 80:20 rule of thumb works with their customers. When sales people segment their market by sales, they discover that 80% of their sales come from customers in the top 20%, whereas 20% of sales come from customers in the bottom 80%. Does this seem true for customers of your business? If your business is typical, this result must be true since the 80:20 rule is an application of Pareto’s universal principle. Figure 1 analyzes the sales of two market segments of a typical business. Goodwill bookstore temporary Site First of its Kind in Nation; Partnership with the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative (TEEI) to Help Create Job Training and Employment Opportunities for Transgender Individuals. SAN FRANCISCO, CA, September 27, 2010 — Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties (â€Å"Goodwill†) is pleased to announce the Grand Opening of its new â€Å"pop up† store in San Francisco’s Castro District. A new concept for Goodwill, which currently operates 17 stores and 26 donation sites across three counties, the store is the first of its kind nationally to provide job training and employment opportunities for members of the transgender community. Part of this historic opening is Goodwill’s partnership with the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative (TEEI), which will work with Goodwill to encourage employment sustainability among transgender individuals. Goodwill offers job training and placement programs that help foster career development and employment sustainability for people who face challenges to finding employment. With an estimated 70% of transgender Californian’s facing workforce discrimination, with fewer than half employed full time, there is a growing need for job training and employment opportunities among the transgender population. * â€Å"Work with dignity is a basic human right. Anyone with the desire to work should be able to,† said Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez, President and CEO, Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties. â€Å"We’re proud to work with TEEI on leveraging the Castro pop up store as a place where transgender individuals can seek employment and receive on the job training in effort to fight workforce disparity among California’s transgender population. † TEEI, a unique collaborative program of the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center (The Center), Jewish Vocational Service, and the Transgender Law Center, was designed to help transgender individuals find stable jobs that provide a living wage, benefits, and opportunities for advancement. Its partnership with Goodwill is an example of the continued collaboration it hopes to have among local government, neighborhoods, businesses, and philanthropies, to improve the lives of transgender individuals in the workforce. â€Å"Based on a recent California survey transgender respondents are twice as likely as the general population to hold a Bachelors degree, yet are also twice as likely to live below the poverty line,†* said Clair Farley, TEEI Economic Development. Coordinator. â€Å"It is our hope the Castro pop up store will serve as a model for future programs to help transgender individuals overcome the barriers they face to finding sustainable employment. † San Francisco District 8 Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who was instrumental in helping bring Goodwill and TEEI together on the pop up store, agrees: â€Å"This promises to be a Goodwill store that is unique as the Castro, bringing new shoppers to the neighborhood, and jobs to those in need. † National Bookstore offers a wide range of products from the retail sale and distribution of books to the sale of various school supplies. National Bookstore’s products, specifically the school supplies, are mostly aimed for the students’ and office workers’ consumption and needs. However, the customers of National Bookstore are not limited to just students and office workers.