Former employee who took a leaf out of Amazon’s book

The Times has a prfile of Andrew Crawford . They say the notion of competing with Amazon, the internet retailing giant, may appear daunting. But it did not deter Andrew Crawford who took on the online bookseller and has prospered. By 2004 he was free to follow his dream and so, with £10,000 of his own savings, he built a website and the Book Depository (Thebookdepository.com) was born.

The company has a single simple aim – to try to make all books available to all people. Crawford said: “If there is knowledge out there we should be trying to distribute it. That basically has been my mission all the way through.”