Expansion and recent history
The Ramos children proposed expanding the scope of National Book Store, and a branch along Recto Avenue was opened, an area often frequented by students. In the 1970s, branches were opened in shopping malls in Makati and Cubao, Quezon City.[5] For the next decades since the opening of the Recto branch, the book store grew with shopping mall owners approaching the Ramoses to set up a store inside their properties. National Book Store became one of the top 100 Philippine corporations in 1988, registering profits of $1 million on gross revenues of $34.7 million. The book store chain also became one of the Top 500 of the list by Retail Asia-Pacific, ranking 308th in 2004.[4]
In 2015, National Book Store captures the majority of the Philippine book market having a share amounting to 80 percent, and operates around 127 branches across the Philippines. It also operates Metrobooks, which opened in Hong Kong in 2007, a subsidiary based in the former British crown colony.[4] The book store was believed to have closed in May 2018.[6]
With the pending entry of National Book Store into the Philippine Stock Exchange through the renaming of Vulcan Industrial & Mining Corp., another Ramos-owned company, into National Book Store Retail Corp. they would now also venture into wholesale, publishing, printing, manufacturing, and distribution.[7]
It entered the education industry in 2017 with the launch of NBS College, its first institution for higher learning at the National Book Store building on Quezon Avenue[8] and by 2018, it has now 230 branches all over the country. NBS, under College president Adrian Paulino S. Ramos offers six academic degree programs: BS Accountancy, BS Accounting Information System, BS Entrepreneurship, BS Computer Science, BS Library and Information Science and BS Tourism Management.[9]
