Penguin Books: Introduction to Modern Business
The aim of this essay is to comment on how, over the last six years
Penguin Books Limited has grown and managed external and internal changes.
Sixty one years ago, Allen Lane, the managing director of the Bodley
Head, a British publishing company, revolutionised reading with the introduction
of the first ten Penguin paperbacks. Today, over 600 million paperbacks are sold
yearly. At a time when there was still little of entertainment, paperback books
brought reading to the masses. Nowadays, paperback books bring reading to the
world.
During the last six years (1990-1996) Penguin Books Limited was faced
with many "environmentalist pressures," with a continuous change inside the
company, and competitors trying to imitate its successful innovations on both
sides of the Atlantic.
The major achievement in 1990 was the introduction of a new computer
system into several parts of the Company. The Credit Control department was the
first area and Stock Management, Invoicing Systems, Warehousing, Distribution
and Sales Services followed. Now the whole of the Company's systems are
incorporated and networked.
During this period a new lists including the Twentieth Century Classics
Series complementing the Penguin Classics, Arkana, the New Age list and Fantail,
the mass-market children's list were introduced.
Internal change that took place during that year was the closing down of
the Penguin Bookshops (that expanded to include 12 shops during the last decade),
leaving just one, the specialist Beatrix Potter "House of the Tailer of
Gloucester", with ...