De Marque’s 30+ year history was always rooted in putting technology to the service of advancing culture and knowledge. We pivoted and transformed ourselves throughout the years, using our know-how and expertise to assist creators, publishers, teachers, students and readers in the realm of digital publishing.
Vision and mission.
We connect people and creators across the world so culture can easily thrive everywhere.
De Marque Group is the premier global digital content ecosystem, seeking to connect and promote culture online across the world.
The keys to this success lie in our proven partnership-focused approach with key players in the publishing world as well as through innovation and passion.
Our technology will advance discoverability, diversity and openness by decentralizing data and creating easy-to-use applications and forward-thinking services for content creators, distributors and consumers.
Building success from the basement: 1990-1996
De Marque was founded in 1990 by Marc Boutet in his parents’ basement at the age of 15 years old. What was supposed to be a summer job instead lit his entrepreneurial spirit and became his life’s work.
These modest beginnings were nonetheless essential to De Marque’s initial forays into software development, as the creation of Tap’Touche (or Typing Pal in its English version) would happen during this time. Thanks to its ease of use and engaging experience, the popularity of the typing learning software spurred rapid growth for the fledgling company.
No longer just a side project, De Marque became a legitimate entrant in the educational software market.
A visionary approach to education: 1996-2008
Operating from our very first offices, De Marque continued development on Tap’Touche while venturing into other products, such as Budget Express and magazine digitization, but our presence in the educational market was undeniable. Thanks to Tap’Touche’s popularity in schools, we successfully developed strong relationships with teachers and academic advisors.
Thanks to this network, we began distributing other digital and technology-based resources for classrooms. From online dictionaries to image banks on CD-ROM, we helped numerous other like-minded K-12 developers reach teachers and students.
We became a pillar for the modernization of classrooms and helped usher in the era of interactive whiteboards. We also created L’École branchée magazine, which advocates for the advancement of education by helping it meet the challenges of the digital age to promote student success.
A driving force in digital publishing: 2008 – 2018
In addition to its educational distribution activities, De Marque’s move into digital content distribution was an important turning point that truly defined where the company is today, while remaining true to its original mission.
In 2008, in partnership with the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres (ANEL), the first product in the Cantook ecosystem was launched. Cantook Publishers is an ebook and audiobook distribution service designed to help Quebec publishers enter the world of digital publishing.
The technology was so innovative that it was exported overseas to France (2009), Italy (2010) and Spain (2014). It now handles worldwide distribution of digital content for major publishing consortia.
Cantook Libraries, the library e-lending service, was launched in 2011. A partnership with Bibliopresto enabled the introduction of digital lending in public libraries in the province of Quebec, then in Canada, France, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland.
Growing internationally: from 2018 to now
While De Marque had already established an international presence, the company experienced remarkable growth thanks to strategic acquisitions such as Libranda, Feedbooks, Aldiko, Cyberlibris and ComixSuite. These acquisitions have not only enriched our vision by adding an online bookstore, a mobile reading app and academic content, but have also solidified our presence in Europe while opening up new markets in North Africa.
This expansion positions De Marque as an expert in the field of accessible reading. Accessible ebooks can be the difference between a difficult or fulfilling academic journey, or enable readers to effortlessly include reading in their leisure time, without it being a challenge. This is why De Marque is committed to developing accessibility tools in our reading applications and offering services to help publishers make the transition to this new standard.
Education remains at the heart of De Marque’s mission, and we have further demonstrated our commitment to harnessing technology for learning by launching our Cantook Éducation reading platform in all school libraries in Quebec, via Bibliopresto’s Biblius project, with great success!
Today, De Marque is an ever-expanding ecosystem of products and services, unified under the Cantook brand. In addition to our professional solutions, we’re taking a new approach to bringing the best reading tools and environments to the general public, including the Cantook mobile app (formerly Aldiko) and our online bookstore.
But the De Marque story is above all that of a passionate team determined to nurture the unique relationship between publishers, booksellers, libraries, schools… between readers and their books.