Linking the world’s bookstores

ENAR

Company: Cedar Books/BookWitty Country: Lebanon/Switzerland Industry: Books Founder: Cyril Hadji-Thomas and Sany Naufal Capital raised: $1 million investment from Bader   The Internet, it is widely believed, is killing the local bookstore. Across the world independent retailers are going bust as customers turn to Amazon to save a few dollars per purchase. In the United Kingdom alone the number of bookstores has fallen by over half in the last seven years. Much of the problem is efficiency. Bookstores, particularly independent ones with their high rental costs and low turnovers, cannot compete with the infinite number of sellers online. So while they may be run by people with real expertise and specialist knowledge, they lack infrastructure to enable them to utilize that knowledge. Hadji-Thomas (L) and Naufal formed Cedar Books in 2007   Cyril Hadji-Thomas and his co-founder Sany Naufal want to help them with that infrastructure. They have already established