About Us
Executive Information Services (Pty) Ltd started in 1988, acquired The Caxton Bookshop in April 2001 and merged three companies (Executive Books, Executive School Supplies and The Caxton Bookshop) under the name Caxton Books with a strategic view to becoming the book supplier of choice to specialised markets throughout southern Africa.
Caxton Books traces its history in Cape Town back to 1948. The company’s strength is built on vastly experienced staff, extensive product knowledge, flexibility in approach and an unsurpassed supplier network stretching across the globe.
Products
Our product mix is 80% books with the balance split between stationery, art material and paper. The books we supply vary from large multiple copy orders for school / academic textbooks and library books; to single copy orders of specialised books on a diverse array of subjects from Ancient Greek Pottery, Contract Law in Nigeria, workshop manuals for vintage cars, books on gold mining and bomb making to management titles for conferences and medical texts for hospitals.
Clients
We supply our products to national and international clients throughout the world. The diversity of our client base reflects the need for books in all spheres of life.
Our clients range from pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions, academic, legal, corporate, city and provincial libraries, government departments, courts of law from magistrates to the appeal and constitutional courts and private sector business from mining houses, legal firms, investment banks and hospitals to medical practices.
While satisfying the needs of any institution, public or private sector, we also cater for individuals who are struggling to find books that are not available in most retail bookshops.
We have concluded several sizeable contracts, some of which are still on-going. A list of these is shown below:
- The on-going supply of books and stationery to the Western Cape Education Department and Cape Town schools valued in excess of R6,000,000 per annum.
- A contract to supply paper to the Northern Cape Education Department valued in excess of R1,000,000.
- A contract to supply schoolbooks to the Free State Education Department valued in excess of R3,000,000.
- A contract to supply in excess of R1,000,000 worth of art books to the Mpumalanga Education Department.
- A current contract to supply multi-media resources to Free State Education Department Libraries valued in excess of R5,000,000.
- Supply of library books to Cape Provincial Library Services valued at approximately R1,000,000 per annum. This is on-going.
Staff & Management
The staff complement of Caxton Books stands at 12 full-time staff. Contract employees are hired when seasonal demand dictates the need for extra resources. The seasonal nature of the book trade has allowed us to build up a large pool of experienced “book people” that we are able to call on when we are busy with a project.
Robin Wilson has held executive positions in the music and stock broking industries and entered the book trade in the early nineteen eighties. He has managed various operations including book clubs, mailing companies and specialised book suppliers.
Jonathan Ferreira entered the book trade in the early nineteen nineties. He continues to be responsible for the management of the company while examining other opportunities for strategic growth