US distributor moves on UK

San Diego-based distributor Advanced Marketing Services has increased its foothold in the UK through the acquisition of Aspen Book Marketing, the Maidenhead-based distributor that supplies books to 350 Safeway supermarkets.

The acqusition marks AMS' first foray into the UK supermarket sector. Michael Kidd, Advanced Marketing UK managing director, said: "This is a substantive acquisition which takes us into the fourth key book market outside of bookshops. Supermarkets have a very large volume of traffic and our competitors are already there—we have joined the party."

US-based AMS is the parent company of Advanced Marketing Europe, based in Bicester, Oxfordshire, which comprises Advanced Marketing UK, Aura Books and Metrastock.

London-based Advanced Marketing UK distributes to the PriceCostco warehouse clubs and a number of small retailers; Aura Books serves non-traditional markets such as garden centres, gift shops and department stores; and Metrastock distributes speciality books to garden centres, craft and gift markets.

Aspen, which counts Safeway as a key client, generated sales of about £8m in its last financial year. "We were very interested in having Safeway as a client. It is a very large, very progressive supermarket," Mr Kidd said.

He added that Aspen would continue to be run as a separate division, and confirmed that David Gross would continue as Aspen m.d. Aspen has about 160 employees, most of whom are part-time merchandisers. "There will be economies of scale, but no jobs will be lost and I am pleased about that," he said. "If you've made a good acquisition you should be able to grow it from that base, not carve it up."

AMS has made a number of significant acquisitions over the past few years, including the £3.7m acquisition of Aura in March 1998.

Results for AME show sales of £11m for the year to end-February 1999. The company paid £721,000 for a stake in Metrastock after the year end, in March 1999. Mr Kidd said that the company planned to continue investing during the coming year and was interested in increasing its business with supermarkets.

The latest results from AMS, the US parent company, show that sales in the UK were $8.7m (£5.8m) for the quarter to end-June 2000. This represented 6% of total sales, which were $148m (£99m) for the quarter. AMS is a global business with book distribution operations in North America, the UK, Mexico and Australia.