Careers at Indigo Books & Music

Mission

To inspire our customers and those they care about with life-enriching products and experiences

History

Indigo Books maintains a near monopoly position in the book store market in Canada. Now known as Chapters Indigo, Indigo Books and Music was founded by Heather Reisman in 1996, in Toronto, Canada. Prior to founding Indigo, Reisman had already acquired years of entrepreneurial experience through her upbringing and through other ventures.

In 1979, she founded Paradigm Consulting, where she remained for 17 years. Following that, Reisman became president of Cott Beverages in 1992. In 1995, Chapters, the American bookstore giant attempted to enter the Canadian market. Reisman sought to partner with them but was unable to obtain regulatory approval from the Canadian government. Reisman decided to strike out on her own and founded Indigo Books and Music as Canada’s first big box book retailer.

With the support of Onex Corporation, a private equity firm founded by her husband, Reisman launched Indigo and established its first store by 1997. Indigo’s first location was in Burlington, Ontario, located very close to Toronto. The new store attracted outsized interest due to its melding of small store sensibilities with big retailer variety and volume. By this time Chapters had managed to enter the Canadian market and had become the largest book retailer in Canada after its merger with SmithBooks and Coles.

By 1999, Chapters had established an online retailer, which then became a separate publicly-traded company. By 2000, Indigo too had entered the online retail market and expanded its physical presence to over 14 stores located across Canada. The same year, Trilogy Retail Enterprises bought a portion of the company. In 2001, Indigo purchased Chapters, allowing to become a dominant force in the book retail market in Canada.  By 2003, Indigo started shipping music through its online retail outlets. In 2006, Indigo was named one of Canada’s Top 100 employers by MediaCorp.

In 2009, Indigo made its foray into the e-reader market with the launch of Kobo Inc. Their first product was launched the following year. Kobo was later sold to Japanese firm Rakuten in 2012 for $315 million. In 2011, the company had an annual revenue of over $ 1.017 billion.