Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

Take a moment and visualize your typical customer.

On any given day, who would you expect to see walk through the door? Students, coming in to pick up books, supplies or a quick snack? Or, during slower times throughout the year, maybe you and your employees interact more with faculty or staff members, stopping in on their way to their offices or during a lunch break.

If you missed our recent webinar series that gives a closer look at Arc, don't worry — MBS Systems customers can still catch it.

If you've been reading along this week, you've seen how far Foreword has come in the last half a decade — and we're just getting started.

We've spent this week celebrating how far Foreword Online has come in five years, but without our loyal readers and content contributors, we wouldn't be where we are today.

When you think of the word “registry,” what comes to mind? If you’re like most people, you associate gift registries with major life events like weddings or the arrival of a new baby. Registries are a convenient way to let loved ones know what items are needed without having to explicitly ask for them, which is why they work so well for those big rites of passage.

In the college bookstore, loyalty doesn’t have to be an intangible concept that you can’t quite quantify. For a store like yours, there are few, if any, things more valuable than repeat customers who show a consistent desire to come back to you first, ahead of your competitors. Whatever their reason is – be it your wider selection, friendly service staff, etc. – your store is in a position to reward your customers for their continued loyalty, and you can dole out those rewards in a number of ways.

Our partner stores always amaze us with their innovative ideas, strategies and events. But we also understand that, sometimes, your schedule can make it very difficult to prepare for and implement them. That’s why we developed our Monthly Marketing Plans! Each month, we’ll provide you with access to new strategies you can easily implement to drive customers to your store, website, and even social media sites.

Today, MBS is known across North America as a leading wholesaler and systems developer for college stores. But did you know that before we had hundreds of thousands of titles on hand in a 350,000-square-foot warehouse, there was a time when we were just two full-time employees in an old grocery store?

“We’re never going to survive unless we get a little bit crazy”

A few years ago, Ashland University Bookstore Director Terri Hudson wanted to put something together that would involve the people in her local community beyond the school’s north-central Ohio campus. What she came up with was something called the American Girl Club, which would typically host teas for mothers and daughters around Valentine’s Day or Christmas.