This was my first entrepreneurial (ad)venture, where I learned the ropes in international, wholesale and retail trade (both things to-do and not-to-do). The aim of the business was to increase availability and accessibility of children’s book selection of international publishing houses’ such as Random House (Penguin) and Dorling Kindersley (DK) in Turkey (NB: over the years these publishers merged under Pearson’s umbrella).
The end-to-end experience in selecting right books/series, striking back-to-back deals with publishers, wholesalers and retail chains, bundling services around localisation, printing, delivery of books and cracking the cyclical demand pattern of children’s books proved to be an advanced-level on-the-job training in founding a business.