Van Schaik Bookstore, South Africa’s largest bricks and mortar textbook retailer, has launched a new service on its website, for parents to buy print and digital school textbooks online. Schoolbooks Direct is an easy to use e-commerce service for parents, providing institutions’ booklists as a reference, and offering the most comprehensive stock of schoolbooks available in South Africa. With a branch network of 65 stores across the country, parents have the choice of ordering their books online and collecting at the nearest bookstore, or having the books delivered to their homes.
“We want to alleviate the time consuming challenge parents face searching for schoolbooks at the beginning of a school year – it’s an added stress that we want to alleviate, by offering our expertise and stock through a dedicated online portal for textbooks. Our new offering is ready for the 2024 school season and will provide relief to parents who struggle to find textbooks in good time,” said Ugan Poobalan, Managing Director, Van Schaik Bookstore.
Van Schaik already carries a full range of print and electronic textbooks from all the major South African publishers. Titles from Oxford, Maskew Miller Longman, Macmillan, Cambridge, Via Afrika and 50 other school publishers, are included in the 250 000 school textbooks stocked by Van Schaik Bookstore. The publications include ranges such as Platinum, Sonder Grense, SpotOn, Success, Focus, and many more.
Van Schaik chose to offer the school book market the Schoolbooks Direct platform after identifying that parents needed a direct, convenient and time saving method of sourcing their children’s textbooks.
Van Schaik Bookstore has repositioned its offering over recent years from primarily being an academic book retailer for tertiary institutions, to offering schoolbooks, plus a wider range of stationery and allied products for students and office employees.
“We have been selling textbooks online through our Van Schaik Bookstore website for a while, but Schoolbooks Direct takes it to another level by focusing on providing the book lists for specific schools and ensuring the stock is available – we aim to make this a first choice textbook store for parents,” said Poobalan.
Schools use a variety of textbooks from dozens of publishers and Van Schaik simplifies the process by acting as an aggregator for all publishers. Although most textbooks used in SA schools are locally published, schools offering the CAMBRIDGE IGCSE or A LEVELS, can also contract Van Schaik Bookstore to hold stock at a location close to their schools.
School principals or their book committees can contact their nearest Van Schaik Bookstore or email directsales@vanschaik.com and the local sales representative will help school onboard their booklists. Parents can visit: www.vanschaik.com/educationalinstitutions to purchase schoolbooks.
“We work closely with educational institutions, and we understand the academic market. Our research showed that buying textbooks was a headache for parents, and Schoolbooks Direct offers a very convenient and cost-effective solution – it’s the logical next step,” said Poobalan.
