Tony Nash

Tony Nash's Biography

Booktopia CEO Tony Nash started his first internet business in 1996. In 2004 Tony founded Booktopia, an online bookstore, with an allocated budget of $10 a day. The company’s first book sold in 3 days. Fast track ten years and Booktopia now sells one book every ten seconds, with an annual turnover of $115 million a year. It was listed in BRW’s Fast 100 from 2009 to 2014, 2016 and 2017, and was voted Australia’s Favourite Bookshop by the Australian Booksellers Association.

One of the defining aspects of the business is its philanthropic program. So far Booktopia has donated $750K in books and cash to literacy based projects in Australia including indigenous literacy, writers festivals, readers conferences, library fundraising projects and book industry awards.

2014 saw Booktopia win the Telstra Medium Sized Business of the year award for NSW and the Smart Company Community Award for its philanthropic program supporting literacy, writers’ festivals and readers’ conferences.

Booktopia recently launched a business within its business called Booktopia Publisher Services (BPS). This division offers book distribution and wholesale services for local and international publishers in the Australian marketplace. This means bookstores and businesses need to buy those books from BPS directly if they want to on sell them to their customers.

After being a finalist for 7 years Booktopia finally took out the top award as the 2018 NSW Business of the Year and Medium Sized Business Award at the Telstra Business Awards 2018.

In July 2018 Booktopia also won Best Pureplay Online Retailer at the Online Retail Industry Awards and Tony was acknowledged with the Industry Recognition Award.

Tony is an entrepreneur, founder and chief executive officer in online retail. With a background in recruitment, programming, business development, selling, SEO and internet marketing, Tony has developed outstanding negotiation and leadership skills with a thorough understanding of sales, forecasting, bootstrapping, PR, empowerment and managing an executive team.

Speaking Topics Include

 

Tony Nash is comfortable speaking on any, or all, of these topics. He can adapt his keynote presentations from 15 minutes to 2 hours and tailor his content to a specific subject.

 

The Story of Booktopia - Tony talks about the creation and success of Australia's favourite online bookstore.

Business and Industry Panels - Tony is a sought after panelist. He can discuss and participate on almost all types of business panels' discussion topics.

Disruptor - From 2004 to 2019 Booktopia has gone from zero to a profitable $100m++ revenue company shipping over 30,000 individual books per day. Over those 15 years everyone has been talking about the death of books, the end of physical bookshops and the annihilation of everyone by Amazon. Very few companies have accomplished so much from so little.

Bootstrap Start Ups - Started Booktopia on a $10 per day budget. With no external investment, it is has over 200 employees and a 13,000 sqm facility in Sydney.

Entrepreneurship - Tony has started 4 companies, all from nothing. He makes the invisible visible.

Leadership – Tony’s background in recruitment and ability to attract and keep high quality talent is testimony to his leadership style.

Online Retail - Booktopia is a multi-award winning business, voted the People's Choice Australian Business of the Year at the 2018 Telstra Business Awards and NSW Business of the Year. Voted Best Purely Online e-Commerce Store in 2018 at the Online Retail Industry Awards in 2018. Tony also won the Industry Recognition Award that year. Booktopia has been voted Book Retailer of the Year in 2016 and 2017.

Internet & Digital Marketing - Before Booktopia, Tony and his family ran an Internet Marketing consultancy. He has SEO, PPC, Social Media, EDM, online retailing and many other skills. All of Booktopia's marketing is still performed and implemented in house.

Acquisitions - In 2015 Booktopia bought Angus & Robertson, a 130+ year old iconic Australian bookstore business and integrated it in to the business in 28 days and it has been profitable every since.