Abstract

Over the past few decades, the market for used books had declined and many used bookstores around the world have closed. Sydney, Australia, where Ampersand Bookstore and Café was located, was no exception to this trend. Yet, Vangel Cvetkovski, co-owner and operator of Ampersand, has steered it towards financial success. Established as a bookstore café, a familiar environment accessible to most university students, this case examines how Vangel and his partner overcame the limitations of the used bookstore and café industries to create a hybrid business model and how they got it to work.

Learning Objectives

This case is designed to support a holistic approach towards teaching corporate strategy, where students are not only encouraged to leverage commonly used strategic frameworks on a standalone basis but also to use them in conjunction to generate a big picture understanding through external and internal analyses. Students will also learn how to use the right frameworks in the right situations and synthesize insights from multiple frameworks to understand why Ampersand has been succeeding where many others have been failing.