ABEBOOKS

“Amazon wasn’t really established yet and the book market in Europe was extremely attractive because it was huge.” – Hannes Blum, Co-founder JustBooks, later CEO AbeBooks

While studying and working on their PhD, five WHU students in the late 90s were facing a problem that would later become the groundwork of their business model: How to gain access to the necessary expert publications or appropriate specialist literature, with the books either being out of print or out of stock. So they founded JustBooks 1999 in Düsseldorf, Germany, scaling their online-based business as a true digital pioneer from German startup to Europe’s market leader in no time.

“Especially for used and rare editions, the new possibilities of the Internet added true value: Making a highly inefficient, very fragmented and local market finally transparent and searchable on a global level.” – Hannes Blum

Meanwhile in Victoria/BC, Canada, two couples – Rick and Vivian Pura and Keith and Cathy Waters – had founded AbeBooks to make it easy for people to find and buy any book from any bookseller anywhere.

In 2001 – right in the dotcom aftermath – Canada’s AbeBooks acquired Europe’s JustBooks, to create the world’s largest source for out-of-print and hard-to-find books. In 2008, Amazon acquired the company and JustBooks’ co-founder Hannes Blum became President and CEO of the newly created market leader AbeBooks Inc. Today, thousands of independent booksellers are listing millions of rare books on AbeBooks’ network of websites and the company is still operating from its two historic headquarters Victoria, BC and Düsseldorf.