A Real Brand, a Real Promise

A few weeks ago, a would-be new customer reached out to us with a question that caught me off-guard: "Is ThriftBooks a real company?"

On reflection I found this an honest question, but it did take me a bit by surprise. "Of course, we are a real company," I thought, "How could it seem like we are not?"

As I thought about it more, it made increasing sense to me why someone might ask this. In our widening virtual world—made even more so by the pandemic—we are right to question what is on the other side of the glowing screen in front of us. So, I'd like to take some time to share a bit more about ThriftBooks.

ThriftBooks is indeed a real company. We were founded in 2003 as one of the earliest sellers of used books on Amazon. Over the years, we have been fortunate to expand to other marketplaces as well as develop our own destination website, right here at ThriftBooks.com.

We have worked exceptionally hard to establish ourselves as a real company, but there is a lot more to this answer.

About ThriftBooks

We are a company fueled by real, passionate people. We directly employ the people who work in our processing centers, approaching a thousand teammates throughout the United States. These are real jobs for hardworking team members, many who have been with us for years, advancing from entry level positions into operations and corporate management roles. I could (and maybe I should) spend entire blogs highlighting the employee advancement success stories as they truly are inspiring.

We purchase millions of pounds of used books each month, transport them to our various processing center locations, separate valuable books from damaged materials, ascribe an accurate quality rating to each received book, and list the books our algorithms tell us are in demand across our marketplaces and ThriftBooks.com for fair market value.

We do not sell every book we acquire at retail. We have a team of people who also focus on providing books to those in need, such as in corrections facilities, local community centers, non-profits, and even schools in underdeveloped countries. If we cannot find a new home for a book, like ones that might be too damaged for reading, we take responsibility for properly recycling it.

You might imagine there are significant costs in running an enterprise like this at scale, entirely committed to getting the job done well every day of the year. You would be right. We are constantly investing in our customer experience, endlessly innovating, ceaselessly challenging ourselves to be the very best at what we do. We are building what we hope is a lasting brand.

Our Customers Mean the World to Us

When I joined ThriftBooks about 18 months ago, I was intrigued by the opportunity to combine my passion for marketing with my personal desire to "do good." What I have found in my time as a leader in this organization are countless like-minded people all with a passion for doing right by our customers.

Our Customer Service team is committed and tireless. I'm impressed by the dedication they have towards making every single experience remarkable for our customers. In 2020, ThriftBooks Customer Service ranked in the top 3 for America's best customer service of online booksellers for the third year in a row, in the company of Amazon and 50 year old Powell's Books. With over 730,000 reviews on Trustpilot, our customer rating remains at "Excellent."

These are solid external evaluators but let me share some behind-the-scenes elements that may surprise you.

When you write into our web suggestion form on our website, your question or comment doesn't just go to our Customer Service team. It also goes to our president (one of the founders of the company) and to me. We read every one and take each to heart.

When you post your book hauls on social media with the ThriftBooks label still on the spine, our General Managers look up the inventory ID to see which employees in our processing centers touched that book during its journey to you and we share your post with them. We love to see your excitement over your latest book find, deal, or reading challenge!

Our Team Makes Us Who We Are

Our web team has built ThriftBooks.com and our ThriftBooks app from the ground up. It's our own proprietary system and we are super proud of it. We don't sell our customer data and we don't run ads on our site. We work hard to find the best approach to list and browse the millions of books we have in inventory and to have copies of books you know you want, and even those you don't know you want until you discover them.

Our Vintage Receivers, who work on repairing, grading, and listing our rare and collectible books, are employees with impressive biblio-centric backgrounds. They commit themselves to matching unique books to homes that will cherish them. It's not a job for them—it is indeed a dedication to making this connection. Their knowledge and passion for these treasurable books runs deep and between all of them they can provide a level of insight and information on all our tens of thousands of collectible books.

We pride ourselves in being a good partner with our communities through our donations to non-profit organizations and to small clubs or passion projects that we hear about via social media or our ThriftBooks Gives email. Our community relationship also extends to libraries across the country. Through our profit-sharing partnerships and support for their fundraising galas, we are honored to call libraries our partners.

The Value of a Brand

Unfortunately, not every used bookseller you come across online has this same level of commitment to their business. As I have discovered, the used book business is rampant with arbitrageurs and those without the best interest of the customer at heart. Many are committed only to making the most money they can from you, without investing in any aspect of a real business. These bad actors exploit the system and subject you, the customer, to their fraudulent ways. They purchase books from us only to resell them on Amazon or other marketplaces for more money to unsuspecting consumers.

Arbitrage doesn't stop there. Often these sellers never physically touch the book, listing phantom inventory on Amazon and then when it sells, they buy the book from us, putting in the seller's address and having us ship out the book and incur the labor and shipping cost. The customer receives the book purchased from the arbitrageur at a higher price than what ThriftBooks would have sold it for directly.

In extreme but not uncommon scenarios, these arbitrageurs will take a customer's money and also submit a refund claim with Amazon against us. In those cases, the arbitrageur receives the customer's money AND a refund from us, all without doing any work or taking any inventory risk. Third-party marketplaces enable this at a scale we cannot control.

Arbitrageurs do not operate or provide jobs in processing centers. They do not invest in technology to provide a safe and easy shopping experience. They do not care about fair market pricing, nor do they care about playing a meaningful role in communities where employees and customers thrive. They don't build brands because they have no brand promise to offer.

Make no mistake, this problem is not just with books. Many categories and industries are affected, and unfortunately our industry has yet to deploy effective controls to stop this practice. That's why we encourage consumers to purchase directly from us—you can then be assured you will get OUR product, picked and packed by OUR dedicated employees, and supported by OUR best-in-class customer service team. That is our brand promise, and we stand behind it 24/7/365.

More Than a Real Company

It is entirely reasonable to question if a company is real, but is that enough? Not for me. ThriftBooks is real, but arbitrageurs are real, too. Perhaps some additional questions are "Is the company a good actor? Can the brand be trusted? Does the company have a fair business model that supports the entire chain from suppliers to employees to customers?

ThriftBooks is indeed a good actor. We are not perfect and always seek ways to improve, but we care immensely about our employees, our partners, our communities, and our customers. We truly love books, and continually strive for that lofty goal: matching every book with a new home.

That's our idea of real.

About the Author: Barbara Hagen is the Vice President of Marketing and Sales here at ThriftBooks. She has more than 20 years of experience as a senior marketing executive, with an undergraduate degree in marketing from Syracuse University, an MBA in international marketing from NYU's Stern School of Business, and an MS in data analytics, also from NYU's Stern School.

Read more by Barbara Hagen