johannesburg . bertram trading limited type limited company industry book publishing founded 1971 founder elsie bertram kip bertram headquarters norwich uk key people graeme underhill group managing director parent connect group website www.bertrams.com bertrams is the second largest united kingdom based wholesaler of books 1 owned since 2009 by smiths news . it has 150 000 titles available for same day despatch and has access to over 600k books in print . the group includes bertram books bertram publisher services and bertram library services . the company was founded in 1971 by elsie bertram and her son kip based on a business which elsie had been running since 1965 in a chicken shed in the garden of her norwich home . 1 it had and still does have independent booksellers as its core customers . bertrams was bought by woolworths group in 2007 . the acquisition was reviewed by the competition commission . the retail business of woolworths group and its distribution firm entertainment uk entered administration in november 2008 although bertrams did not as it operated as a separate division within the group . 2 woolworths group entered into administration itself in january 2009 . bertrams entered administration on 20 march 2009 and sold on the same day by ernst & young in a pre pack deal to smiths news now connect group for 8 611 622 . 3 see also edit list of book distributors references edit a b elsie bertram . the daily telegraph . 10 november 2003 . retrieved 18 august 2013 . graeme neill 27 november 2008 . bertrams escapes as woolies fails . the bookseller . retrieved 18 august 2013 . graeme neill 22 march 2009 . bertrams sold to smiths news . the bookseller . retrieved 18 august 2013 . external links edit official website retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title bertrams & oldid 737100817 categories 1971 establishments in the united kingdombook distributorsf . w. woolworth companywholesalers of the united kingdom navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 31 august 2016 at 19 28 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view