Styring and Bell look to build Igloo Books

Igloo Books plans to grow the business by 20% and set up a new third-party distribution business, its c.e.o. John Styring and newly appointed chief operating officer Andrew Bell have told The Bookseller.

When Igloo started life in 2003 its operations were focused on buying in books en-masse and selling them to customers, but it is now firmly established in the UK publishing market.

Styring said Igloo had “grown up” over the past five years. “We are now dealing with every single book retailer. The notable exception is Waterstones but with the new offerings and higher price points I think we will start to supply Waterstones this year,” he said.

The hiring of Bell was just the start of a recruitment drive—Styring is aiming to hire around 20 new employees in the next 12 to 18 months. Turnover is predicted to increase 22% this year, reaching £27m, up from £22m in 2013.

A major new venture will be a third-party distribution service, as yet unnamed, which Igloo will launch later this year. “At the moment we’re already visiting all the major retailers for Igloo and we’re proving to ourselves that we’ve got high levels of service, so we’re planning to open that up and run it as a separate business,” said Styring.

New products are also on the agenda this year. Styring wants to up the number of new titles published from 400 to 600 and increase Igloo’s adult offerings by 5%. “It’s fair to say that a lot of people are pulling back on adult content but we’ve made a strategic decision to go in the opposite direction and invest more,” he said, explaining that some of the growth would come from pregnancy and parenting books, a new area for Igloo.

Bell said investment in digital was a priority and that the company has plans to launch 100 new e-books, as well as develop its interactive sticker book range. The next digital product, due for release this month, is an app based on Disney’s pre-school property The Hive, which centres around a family of friendly bees.

Styring pointed out that many digital products were an extension of Igloo’s sticker books, which are some of the company’s most popular offerings. According to Nielsen BookScan, its 2010 My Sparkly Sticker and Activity Book Pack: Sticker and Activity Book, (average selling price £3.23) is its bestselling title, selling 81,893 copies and generating total sales of £264,670.

The next most popular title is Doll Dressing: Sticker and Activity Book, which has generated sales of £189,719 to date.

Looking at the wider company picture, Bell, who started at Igloo at the beginning of the month, said one of his main goals was to bring more of a corporate structure to the company. He said: “[Joining Igloo] represented a really good opportunity to add what I’ve learnt over the course of my career, from a slightly more corporate environment, and bring the structure and the discipline from those types of environments to help take this business to the next level.”

Bell, who has previously worked at Encompass Digital Media, ITV, Deloitte Consulting and Arthur Anderson, added: “What I’m talking about is bringing structure and discipline to our business, helping it grow but not holding it back.”