Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

At the University of Wisconsin, March Madness has bled into April. Most university bookstores can only dream of getting a single opportunity to support their school’s basketball team as they advance all the way to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament. Wisconsin, however, has not only gotten to do this once – they are doing it for the second year in a row.

Students look forward to buyback all semester. Not only do they have the opportunity to get some cash by selling their books back, but buyback also symbolizes that summer vacation is right around the corner. So take advantage of their excitement by making this your biggest event of the year and the greatest buyback ever. Basically, turn your buyback into a (organized) circus!

As an official Apple retailer, the University Store at the University of Wyoming wanted to help their customers become experts on the technology they would be purchasing in their store.

If you work in a bookstore, you know how important it is to get your adoptions in early, but your faculty might not. With that in mind, we've outlined a few scenarios below to help guide your faculty through the adoption process. Show them the benefits of gettings the lists in earlier, as well as the consequences of a delayed or last-minute submission. Just make sure you keep them on the straight and narrow!

With their men’s basketball team going through perhaps the greatest era in school history, excitement on the Iowa State campus is at an all-time high. Capitalizing on that hype is the Iowa State Bookstore, who first launched a promotion called “Magic Monday” (a reference to ISU’s Hilton Magic) at the mid-way through the 2013-14 season.

With the holidays right around the corner, Riverland Community College is getting its customers in the spirit with 12 Days of Holiday Deals. The holiday campaign began on December 4th, and will run through the final day of class on the 19th, offering customers a new deal each weekday.

As part of a university-wide goal to make the campus a little greener, the University of Minnesota Duluth bookstore went bag free between November 3rd and 7th. Ann Pellant, the Buyer Supervisor at the bookstore, says that they are planning to make this a biannual event from now on, after only doing it in April for the past six years.

The rise of the smartphone has brought along a lot of new trends for people around the world. In addition to allowing people to have nearly all of the world’s information sitting in their pockets, iPhones and similar devices have led to the popularity of selfies (a term that you can now find in the dictionary!)

If you missed out on yesterday's faculty relations webinar, don't worry. We've got the full presentation here ready for you to view at your convenience. Let us know what you think, and remember to join us live at 11 a.m. each of the next three Wednesdays as we continue our Bookstores without Barriers series.

Most stores decide beforehand exactly what a customer's discount is going to be. But at North Dakota State University Bookstore, management leaves that up to fate. They do so by providing a bowl filled with scratch and win cards in front of their bookstore that customers can use to win anywhere between a 15 and 50 percent discount on any clothing or souvenir and gift items.