article needs additional citations for verification . please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . may 2012 learn how and when to remove this template message chapters type subsidiary industry retail founded 1995 toronto ontario headquarters toronto ontario key people heather reisman products books music dvd gifts parent indigo books and music website www.chapters.indigo.ca chapters is a canadian big box bookstore banner owned by indigo books and music . formerly a company in its own right competing with indigo the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001 . as of march 2013 it had 97 superstores and 134 small format stores . 1 contents 1 history 2 criticism and controversies 3 references 4 external links history edit a chapters in markham ontario in july 2009 . inside chapters in markham ontario in october 2008 . chapters former downtown montreal store in the castle building in march 2007 seven years before closing . closed october 4 2014 . chapters inc. was created in 1994 when founder and ceo lawrence stevenson led the buyout and merger of coles and smithbooks canada s two largest book chains at the time . 2 smithbooks was acquired from federal industries and coles was acquired from southam inc. canadian general capital and pathfinder capital bought these two chains with the intention of building large format book superstores comparable to those of the american bookstore chains barnes & noble and borders . the new company was officially created in april 1995 and the first two book superstores were opened in november 1995 . the original superstores were located in burlington ontario and burnaby british columbia . 3 chapters quickly changed the face of the book selling industry in canada . previously companies like coles and smithbooks had many small stores . chapters built large box stores with a much larger product selection . chapters provided chairs and couches for their customers as well as starbucks coffee shops and did not discourage the reading of books inside the store . the company became the largest book retailer in canada with 77 superstores branded as chapters and more than 280 mall based stores under the names coles smithbooks formerly the canadian branch of w h smith classic bookshops the book company and active minds . however the smithbooks the book company and classic bookshops names have been gradually phased and locations have been rebranded as coles stores in recent years . canada s first book superstore toronto s world s biggest bookstore once part of the coles chain was also owned by chapters and had continued to operate under its original name . chapters grew very quickly . it was criticized however for several reasons . it was blamed for the demise of several independent bookstores across canada especially alternative stores carrying obscure or controversial titles . although it was said that chapters also built its business around moving massive numbers of a few bestsellers the majority of its sales came from backlist titles . as the company s market share grew it represented the lion s share of many publishers sales . chapters did not keep the box book store market to itself however with the opening of indigo . headed by heather reisman indigo began to compete with chapters in select markets and opened 14 stores . chapters aggressively expanded into online bookselling with chapters.ca to compete with amazon and also was a majority investor in pegasus a book wholesaler . pegasus was needed to be able to serve the online sales but the business was resisted by canadian publishers and was not successful . in the autumn of 2000 indigo launched a hostile takeover . indigo was able to convince the competition bureau that indigo was not a viable standalone business given the enormous losses that it was sustaining and thus had to be able to merge with the profitable chapters retail chain . by early 2001 indigo had been successful in purchasing chapters but kept both the chapters and indigo brands ; subsequently a number of chapters stores near indigo locations were closed . in some cases coles and smithbooks stores were shut down if they were too close to a chapters site . although there are still some aesthetic differences between the store designs of the chapters and indigo banners they now share many common elements . moreover aside from indigo s larger focus on music product selection and special offers are not generally distinguishable from one to the other . indigo has adopted the starbucks cafes that were in chapters stores and has reduced the seating areas in chapters stores and introduced a very wide range of non book products which had been carried at indigo . criticism and controversies edit main article indigo books and music criticism and controversies since its takeover by indigo chapters has been involved in several controversies often tied to censorship concerns or the strong support for israel by the owner heather reisman and her husband gerry schwartz . reisman and schwartz head the heseg foundation which provides scholarships for discharged lone soldiers who served in the israel defense forces . 4 the book mein kampf by adolf hitler was removed from the shelves of chapters . there was controversy in the fact that the book is sometimes used in a historical context 5 and some university or high school courses have the book on their syllabus . citation needed references edit chapters stores callisto capital l. stevenson biography . callisto capital . retrieved may 9 2012 . chapters profile at canadianretail.com kennemer daniel new fund for lone soldiers launched jerusalem post may 4 2005 http www.goodreports.net news news4.htm external links edit wikimedia commons has media related to chapters bookstore . chapters inc the canadian encyclopedia chapters bid the canadian encyclopedia chapters struggles to survive donney s cafe bookselling and book publishing in canada an emergency report publishers weekly heather reisman cautiously respectfully bullish retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title chapters & oldid 714438892 categories bookstores of canadabook selling websitesretail companies established in 1995indigo books and musichidden categories articles needing additional references from may 2012all articles needing additional referencesall articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from july 2011commons category with local link same as on wikidata 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 in other projects wikimedia commons languages edit links this page was last modified on 9 april 2016 at 19 35 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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