Adlibris Isn't Opening a Store. It's Opening a Destination.
Adlibris calls its coming flagship in Stockholm a destination, not a store. The word choice isn't cosmetic — it moves the whole position from transaction to book culture. And it says something about what digital brands should do when they move into physical space.
Brand development sometimes comes down to small words that make a large difference. One such word stopped me while reading Handelstrender's piece on Adlibris' biggest bet on physical retail to date. In 2027 the e-commerce player opens a flagship at the corner of Drottninggatan and Kungsgatan in Stockholm. But Adlibris would rather not call it a store. They call it a destination.
That's clever, because the word changes the whole picture of what Adlibris is trying to do. A store is somewhere you walk in, buy something and walk out. A destination is somewhere you travel to because you want to be there. Where something is happening. Where you meet people. Where you might stay longer than planned and leave with something you didn't know you needed. In the case of Adlibris, that something could well be a book. It's still a practical business, after all.
According to Handelstrender, the new space will host author talks, book launches and signings, and Adlibris singles out families with children and young readers as key audiences. That's interesting for several reasons. Adlibris was built as an e-commerce company in 1997. Almost thirty years later, one of its biggest investments is a physical place in central Stockholm. It's easy to call that a step backwards. I'd call it a step onwards.
Because the old debate about physical retail versus e-commerce is starting to feel dated. Customers rarely care much about which internal channel name a company uses. They want whatever is easiest, most enjoyable or most relevant in that moment. Sometimes that's two clicks from the sofa. Sometimes it's going to an author talk, leafing through a book, bringing the kids along and actually discovering something you weren't already searching for.
This is where the word destination matters for the Adlibris brand. The company moves from being primarily the place where you buy books to trying to become a place for book culture. That's a much larger position. And potentially a much stronger one. Price, range and fast delivery can always be competed away. A physical experience, a community and a sense of belonging are harder to copy.
The move also says something about how digital brands can think when they enter physical retail. It isn't enough to lift the webshop from a screen into a room and put the products on shelves. That just builds a more expensive version of your site. The physical place has to do something the internet can't do as well. For Adlibris, the answer appears to be encounters, discovery and experiences around literature.
BookTok makes this particularly interesting. Adlibris points to the phenomenon itself as a driver behind growing interest in books among younger readers. Which means the new store effectively ties together two worlds usually described as opposites. A very physical product, the book, is finding new life through a very digital culture. And that digital interest then brings people back into physical retail. It's almost as if customers never read the strategy document about having to pick a channel.
For me it's also a reminder of something we work with often at BBMB: a brand has to develop according to how people actually behave, not according to how the company once organised its business. That's especially true for start-ups and growth companies. What was the great strength at launch doesn't have to be the only way forward ten or twenty years later. Developing a brand doesn't mean abandoning the core. It means finding new ways to make the core relevant.
And the Adlibris core, of course, isn't e-commerce. It's books, reading and access to stories. E-commerce was, from the start, a smart way to deliver that. Now a physical destination looks like another. That's an important distinction.
Companies sometimes get stuck in what they do rather than why customers come to them. A fashion company thinks it sells clothes. A beauty company thinks it sells skincare. A design company thinks it sells furniture. But the strongest brands often sell something larger around the product: identity, belonging, inspiration, knowledge or an experience people want to be part of.
That's exactly the shift Adlibris now seems to want to make. From transaction to relationship. From site to meeting place. From store to destination. And that last word alone is fairly skilled branding. Because who wants to travel to yet another store? A destination immediately sounds like somewhere you'd actually want to go.