Crowder College Bookstore Director Colleen Holland has heard a lot about the MBS Premier Partnership from her MBS representative over the years. Through the years, her store has gotten low-cost inventory from MBS and considered MBS to be a trusted vendor. But this year, Ms. Holland decided it was time to go a step further to receive the many benefits that come with a premier partnership.
“We have always been involved with MBS. Our sales rep, Jeremy Hawkins, has been talking to us about the Premier Partnership for quite some time,” Holland said. The benefits our rep has pointed out to us and shown us made me want to become a premier partner. It just seems like a no brainer. We needed to step up and see if it was as good as it sounded on paper.”
College stores that partner with MBS have access to benefits that will help them get more books, get additional service support and put money back into their budget.
With an MBS Premier Partnership, college stores:
- Have priority access to more used textbooks, saving the store and students money.
- Have additional support from working hand-in-hand with MBS, acting as an extension of the store staff to lower your costs and maximize the partnership.
- Access to cost-saving allowances like the return rebate, marketing allowances and freight allowances that decrease store overhead and put money back into the budget.
“For me, the benefit of the MBS rental program seems like the strongest point right now for our store. With the industry the way it is, it is crazy trying to figure out what the best option is for the store and the students,” Holland said. “How can we provide the students with the best opportunities while also keeping the store where it needs to be in the marketplace? That’s something I think the rental program will bring to us. So far, the partnership has been everything Jeremy said it would be, and we are super happy about that.”
When asked why stores should consider becoming a premier partner, Holland carefully considered her answer.
“Being a premier partner will open greater opportunities for the store. While I do think that’s a cliché, I also feel that’s the truth because being a premier partner is opening doors for me,” Holland said. “We expect to receive more inventory. We love the support that we get from our rep. It is amazing. He does a great job taking care of us. I don’t feel like that is just because of the partnership. I think it is just the standard at MBS. But I do think the partnership opens doors that weren’t available before.”
Another tool the bookstore has recently started using is MBS SimpleSource. SimpleSource is MBS’ ordering tool available to any stores that order from us.
“We started using the SimpleSource tool as well. It has broadened our buying ability, which is, again, a way to bring savings to the students and the store. That’s really all any store is looking for,” Holland said.
Holland was also impressed with how MBS stepped up during a difficult period to help college stores.
“I think MBS really stepped up as a company when COVID hit and they were offering online buyback. We don’t use an outside source for buyback because we have a lot of guidelines for adoptions and we use each edition until it is just not available anymore,” Holland said. “But I think MBS as a company really stepped up when they offered their online buyback option for everybody. It didn’t matter if you were a premier partner or somebody like us who hadn’t made that switch over yet. So that made it really easy to partner with MBS because they are a company who shows stores support regardless of level of partnership.”
