Casa del Libro
Doubling the Store Network while Preserving the Value of Bookselling
- Brand: Casa del Libro
- Geographic Scope: Spain
- Sector: Books, retail, e-commerce, publishing and cultural commerce
The Challenge
The challenge was to modernise its business model, respond to digital change and expand its retail presence without losing the credibility, warmth and specialist value captured in the idea “We are booksellers.”
Our Approach
The project aligned values, business model, physical retail, digital presence and customer experience around a renewed understanding of what bookselling could become.
The Impact
The project helped the company preserve its bookselling identity while becoming a broader, more modern and more accessible leader in the Spanish book market.
Our Relationship
Our role was to help the company modernise without becoming generic: keeping the human value of bookselling at the centre while creating a model better suited to new customers, channels and formats.
The Challenges
Company
Casa del Libro had a strong cultural and commercial legacy in Spain.
As reading, buying behaviour and retail expectations changed, the company needed to define how its history could support its future rather than hold it back.
It had to:
- Preserve its bookselling identity
- Renew its business model
- Involve internal teams in the transformation
- Connect physical and digital channels
- Reach new audiences
- Keep specialist knowledge relevant
Business
The book market was being reshaped by globalisation, digitisation and new retail habits.
Casa del Libro needed to compete beyond the traditional bookstore model while strengthening its role as a trusted cultural and commercial destination.
The business needed to:
- Expand its store network
- Develop new retail formats
- Integrate digital and physical commerce
- Improve access to a broader catalogue
- Attract new customer segments
- Make the shopping experience more relevant and accessible
Brand
The brand needed to evolve without losing its emotional and professional credibility.
Casa del Libro’s strength was not only its catalogue, but the human expertise and cultural familiarity associated with booksellers.
The brand challenge was to balance:
- Heritage and modernity
- Physical retail and e-commerce
- Specialist knowledge and convenience
- Cultural value and commercial growth
- Familiarity and renewed relevance
Our Approach
Company and Business
We began by revisiting Casa del Libro’s values, role and future ambition through a collaborative internal process.
The work explored:
- Organisational values
- Bookselling expertise
- Customer needs
- New retail formats
- Digital transformation
- Catalogue access
- Store experience
- Market evolution
- Internal perspectives
- Future business opportunities
This created a shared platform for renewing the company without losing what made it distinctive.
Branding
We helped Casa del Libro express a more contemporary version of its bookselling identity.
The idea “We are booksellers” became a strategic anchor rather than a nostalgic claim.
It connected:
- Human recommendation
- Specialist knowledge
- Passion for books
- Cultural access
- Digital convenience
- Broader catalogue availability
- New store formats
- Customer trust
The brand needed to remain close, knowledgeable and accessible while becoming more modern, comprehensive and future-facing.
Support
Building a Brand for Modern Bookselling included:
- Business and brand assessment
- Internal interviews
- Workshops and co-creation sessions
- Organisational-values review
- Business-model development
- Retail-format thinking
- Customer and audience analysis
- Brand positioning
- Strategic narrative
- Physical and digital integration
- Customer-experience criteria
- Guidance for preserving the “We are booksellers” idea
- Strategic support for growth and modernisation
Collaborative Process
We worked with internal teams to ensure the transformation was not imposed from outside.
The process helped recover the company’s strongest internal beliefs while identifying what needed to evolve.
Retail and Digital Integration
The new model connected the traditional value of the bookstore with the reach and convenience of e-commerce.
This helped Casa del Libro create a broader relationship with customers across stores, website and catalogue access.
Customer Proposition
The proposition focused on making books more accessible without reducing the experience to a transaction.
Casa del Libro could offer breadth, convenience and availability while preserving the value of recommendation, knowledge and cultural closeness.
Future Growth Criteria
The project provided criteria for expansion, new formats and audience development.
It helped the company decide how to grow while remaining recognisably Casa del Libro.
Transformation and Growth
+
+
Casa del Libro is part of Grupo Planeta, which acquired the company in 1992.
The Impact
Company
The project helped Casa del Libro clarify how to modernise while preserving its identity.
It provided:
- A renewed business and brand platform
- Stronger internal alignment
- A clearer role for bookselling expertise
- A bridge between heritage and future growth
- Criteria for evolving without becoming generic
- A more contemporary expression of the company’s cultural role
Casa del Libro could look forward without abandoning the meaning that made it trusted.
Business
The work supported a significant expansion of the business model.
In two years, Casa del Libro:
- Doubled its number of stores
- Expanded its physical presence
- Strengthened its digital and catalogue proposition
- Offered more than 500,000 titles
- Improved access to literature from five continents
- Created a stronger platform for new audiences and retail formats
The project helped turn transformation into practical growth.
Brand
Casa del Libro gained a clearer and more future-facing brand proposition.
This included:
- A renewed interpretation of “We are booksellers”
- Stronger links between specialist knowledge and customer value
- Better integration of physical and digital experience
- A brand capable of supporting store expansion
- Greater relevance for new customer behaviours
- A more comprehensive and modern cultural-retail identity
The brand could now represent both the bookstore people knew and the bookseller they would need in a digital and omnichannel market.
