By: Sayed Anwar

MIB (2012-2013)

Introduction
The introduction of Better World Books was the idea of Xavier Helgesen, Chris
Kreece Fuchs, and Jeff Kurtzman, three 2001 graduates of the University
of Notre Dame in which they came up with the idea of selling books online
with a parallel mission of non-profit as mission to fund literacy initiatives

around the globe

This idea of approach created social, economic, and environmental value for all
stakeholders in order to create value based company.
To create base for the company, the company acquired its growing inventory

of used books from two primary sources:

1) The Campus Collection program
2) The Library Discards and Donations program, working with more than
1,600 college campuses and about 1,000 libraries nationwide.
Better World Book (BWB) started selling books through a variety of established
online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay and its own retail site known as
betterworldbooks.com
Every order was
shipped carbon
neutral
with offsets from
Carbonfund.org, from these orders and sales, t he company donated 7% to
10% of its revenues to various global literacy initiatives, l i k e partnering with
Books for Africa, National Center for Family Literacy, Room to Read, World
fund, and Invisible Children which were for welfare of the societies
By donating and selling used books, BWB helped to keep away millions of paper
waste from going to waste. The books that did not sell were recycled. BWB also
had a Carbon Neutral Shopping Cart, through which, the company collected two
to five cents on the cost of each book from every customer at on its website.
The collected money was used to buy carbon offset to compensate the
environmental impact of shipping by the company and its literacy partners. In
the financial year 2008, BWB earned revenues of US$ 21 million and had a
revenue target of US$ 31 million in fiscal 2009.
The base of company was innovative idea & technologist which led the company
to grow so fast in very short period of time. Over this period their growth rate
was tremendously impressive and during the period of internet boom they
captured the idea & market. This is the reason they kept on investing more funds
in developing new technologies for operations to finance. Considering the bright
talent in young people, as the company was founded by young graduates they
also prefer hiring new young minds for new positions.
Better World Books have capacity to grow more and more in business

environment. The business of with some suggestions over different aspects led
business to improve its revenue from $30M to $75M over the period of next 3
years.

Core Values and Mission

1. Customer Focus
We are driven to provide customers with a highly-valued experience, and one
that allows them to align their actions with their values. We want to be their
favorite marketplace and their favorite partner, so we incorporate their input into
everything we do.

2. People Matter
We seek out talented people who work hard and invest in them. We respect each
individual, reward achievement, and celebrate team success.

3. Do the Right Thing

We strive to do the right thing at all times, with all people and all issues.

4. Foster Innovation
We look for new ideas and bold moves while we embrace and create change.

5. Passion for Literacy

We are committed to the cause of literacy. Every person should have the chance
to achieve their potential and participate fully in society.

6. People, Planet, Profit

Were more than just a business. We equally consider our shareholders, our
customers, our employees, our community, our planet, and the lives changed by
our common cause. Through our business we strive to enable people to make
sustainable positive changes in this world. Thanks to you, were well on our way

Business Model
The working on technology in order generates big revenue by increasing
sales. BWB currently collects books from 2 different resources: 1 is
campus book drives & another is through a chain of libraries nationwide.
The remaining copies they donate to different NGOs.
The company made efforts to achieve social, environmental, and
economic sustainability. It directly donated books and gave financial
support to literacy initiatives worldwide. Moreover, a percentage of each
sale was given separately to the individuals, libraries, or colleges as well
as literacy partners chosen by them. BWB did not advertise in the media
about collecting and selling books; awareness about its business model
was mainly spread through word of mouth.
The company made efforts to achieve social, environmental, and
economic sustainability. It measured its performance in three areas PEOPLE, PLANET, and PROFIT
Today the company sells used books on major sites like Amazon.com and
ebay.com as well as its own website. Just six years old, the company
earned $31 million in revenue in 2009 and has prevented over 33 million
books from entering landfills to date. As part of its expansive social
mission, Better World Books is a certified B-Corp, a movement to expand
the legal structure of corporations to include employee, community and
environmental interests when making business decisions.
we can recommend that current business model is contributing to the
vision of the company and is in tandem with the core set of its values,
there can be questions raised on social cause of the business to be
reduced to support the goal of revenue and in extreme economic crisis,
however the longer run model suggest that the CSR visibility and such
initiatives are helping BWB for their vision

Strategy
The strategy to make the revenue to 75 million USD should stick to core values
model of the company, as the social cause and people cause cannot be forgotten
to increase the revenue even during economic downturns. The economy reels
and enterprising individuals who apply business practices to solving societal
problems are gaining support from public and private sectors.
The growth model of BWB indicates extreme positive signs of growth in spite of
economic downturns of recessions and hence a similar business model should be
applied while keeping technological, economic and competitive advantage as
flexible to adapt to market situations.
As BWB have created its brand with green operations, it can partner with big
Bookshop chains in order to increase sales. Considering the mutual benefit for
both parties we can assume that by partnering with some bookshop chains &
Supermarkets & Also independent book shops it can make presence in more than
70% market.
To gain more investment and support from organizations promoting literacy
across the world like UNESCO and other social responsible organizations like CRY
and others can contribute to companys capital in terms of subsidies and support
programmes in turn of advertisement on books and other media concerning
methods to create awareness and other social causes.
Expanding overseas to new developing economies like India, China, Brazil,
Mxico, Malaysia etc. countries shall be considered keeping the EU economic
crisis in mind, however advantages from crisis should be taken in terms of more
donations and cost cuts by various school, colleges and library institutions.

People

Peoples are the most important in business and its development. BWB
needs people who are having attachment with the companys vision &
policies. BWB should invest in hiring new talent and long term people. As
currently they prefer newly graduate young minds with good spirit.
The company offers a good benefits package to its full time workers, and
supports its part time employees toward having a path to full time
employment and benefits, says CEO David Murphy. He also said that as
healthcare premiums have gone up, the company has worked to assume a
significant amount of the financial burden to help lessen the impact of
higher contribution costs for employees.
The company has developed an extensive scorecard by which it tracks its
social environmental and financial metrics for its continuous improvement,
as well as surveying employees annually to get their input.

Considering the growth of company & requirement of software systems &

maintenance regularly, BWB should build their own strong Software team
which can fulfil their requirements immediately & keep in sync with
business needs.
The recent economic recession encourage the company to test of its core
values. Some of its area was hard hit by the recession, with deep losses in
its manufacturing base. The company met this challenge by stretching to
avoid layoffs. When reducing the workforce by 42 was all but inevitable,
the CEO and Co-Founders took a 20% pay cut, VPs took 15%, managers
10%, and floor employees took 5% (without a loss in benefits).
Management promised employees that if they hit their target by the end
of the year everyone would get a bonus.

Capital and Shared Ownership

The company has received an investment from investors. If there is a

liquidity event, the partners expect significant rewards for investors,
management, and all employees who hold options.
BWB shares equity with its employees, including warehouse workers
earning, through its incentive stock option program. All employees receive
an initial grant of stock options after one year, followed by subsequent
awards based on performance. While the director of the company notes
some challenges in educating employees about the benefits and risks of
sharing equity.
BWBs social cause has proven business track record that will help in
getting funds. There are unique ideas & business growth will depend on
the ideas after its implementation. Capital investors will be happy to
invest as they can see the possible growth of market by entering into new
business.

Due to the unique structure, the non-profit partners and Better World
Books employees often the last consideration in conventional corporate
deal making will always have a seat at this companys table.
Although Murphy says that he cannot empirically tie the firms employee
engagement practices to better financial results, he points to the
companys turn from unprofitable to profitable during difficult economic
conditions as evidence. Over the past year, our business has done better
than ever during a time when we easily could have had losses and high
employee attrition, he said. Instead, we held together and the fact of
shared cuts.
Hence we can recommend that there can be creative solutions for
engaging both employees and other stakeholders in company success,
also support from organizations promoting literacy across the world like
UNESCO and other social responsible organizations and others can
contribute to companys capital in terms of subsidies and support
programmes in turn of advertisement on books and other media
concerning methods to create awareness and other social causes

Technology

Starting technology department will be a very strategic move,

considering the future growth of company that will lead to avoid many
copyright & security issues. Also as it is growing fast they always need to
update their systems to keep up with new changes in business.
The current marketing opportunities immerged on basis of technology like
online marketing on Ebay and Amazon and social network like Facebook
and Twitter. BWB can consider of this media to market their books and
increasing sales using these sites as they drive majority of audience on

internet. Millions of users of Google & Facebook can be easy market for
advertisement. Also they can consider of Referral based marketing
strategy which can lead to generate traffic to site with little share of profit.
Investment in technology should be focused and should enhance existing
competitive gauge in the industry, also in term of economic should be
taken on lean in existing softwares without sacrificing the upgrades as per
the need of the hour and trend and user friendliness portals for both
customers and companies.
The current outsourced partners contracts should be renegotiated with
BOT model to minimize cost and invest same in various other
technological advancements to generate revenue and hence tie ups with
various manufacturers of same for preinstalled e books and cost
associated projects can be initiated instead of directly entering into an
existing competitive technology market.

Operational

As the number of collected books will grow, further BWB will need more
warehousing space, which can lead to further investments which lead to
increase in workspace and requirement of more skilled resources, and
with the advancement in technology will lead to further expansion of work
force.
In the seasonal time the textbook business increases, during this time which

the warehouse staff gets increase. These employees sorted each incoming
book by conditionacceptable, good, very good, like newand attached
stickers, including a code to identify its source. They scanned each books

bar code to enter information into a database, organizing the books as

they came in.
An Increase in the core activity incremental, new investment in publishing
house and website development for renting books will create operational
complexities for department of coordination between renting books
department and conventional department, hence as the complexity will
increase the reduction in waste mechanism will be required to ensure
minimum efficiency and productivity losses. Not only in terms of internal
operations , also as any organization grows similarly book collection
programmes and other activities operations will lead to further complexity
, hence same can be outsourced up to an extent for cases of remote book
collections.
With overseas expansion the need of bringing books to a central system
or warehouse and then delivering to customer should be minimized
further with more distribution centers and widely spread small warehouses
also keeping the point of customer delivery as close as possible to the
warehouse delivering same.

References
www.betterworldbooks.com
www.google.com/images
Jim Meenan, $4.5 Million Boosts Mishawakas Better World Books, South
Bend Tribune, April 8, 2008.
Christina Hildreth, Old Textbooks See New Use; BWB Donates to Literacy
Charities, South Bend Tribune,
June 6, 2006