Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

Once the last student in line has purchased their books and supplies for the new semester, investing the time for a little bit of assessment and proactive planning now can save you a lot of effort down the road.

If you’re on Snapchat, have you seen a lot of geofilters popping up on people’s stories? You know, those little graphical overlays that feature an illustration of a location or event at which the photo was taken and uploaded?

"If you build it, [they] will come."

Lilli Brooks, Corporate Marketing Representative, shares her experience from over a decade of helping college stores of all sizes tackle their individual challenges. Find out what she's learned about the importance of making connections and why it's essential to keep evolving:

Rush is upon us. You’re making sure inventory is accounted for, stocking shelves, scheduling employees for peak hours and putting out the best and brightest new items on prominent display. It’s usually hectic and stressful, but you have your method down to make things roll as smoothly as possible.

Whether they know it or not, the faculty members at your school play a crucial role in the success of your business. By implementing a few savvy strategies, you can encourage helpful feedback, establish a routine of prompt adoptions and inspire devoted on-campus ambassadors.

Foreword Online is proud of its long history of helping stores promote themselves to succeed and help students save. That said, social media can really change a lot in a short amount of time. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter redesign their users' profiles, adjust their algorithms to make it harder for businesses to reach prospective customers without paying for advertising and even do some seemingly minor things that can really change the way a business promotes itself, like change the optimized size of their profile images.

Incentivizing students to participate in your buyback can often be a tricky thing. Maybe they think they can get a better deal elsewhere. Maybe they’re planning on giving their books to a friend. Maybe they assume their books are worth so little that it’s not even worth stopping by the buyback counter. Finding ways to appeal to them can be hard with all these forces outside of a store’s control, especially since most stores are dependent on a robust buyback in order to make sure their shelves are stocked with the right titles the following term.

With our roots running deep in the textbook business, MBS strives to make life in the hectic world of college retail easier for its partner stores. That goal was a guiding principle behind Arc, our latest innovation that puts all of your retail management tools in one single-portal access point. In this video, see what UCM Store Director Charlie Rutt had to say about the time savings and flexibility Arc will present for his store.

Whether they like it or not, students are most likely going to need their textbooks if they want to be as successful as possible in their pursuit of higher education. But with the costs of both tuition and course materials rising exponentially above the rate of inflation, are students able to afford to be successful? According to figures from the United States Department of Labor and CollegeBoard.org, from 1986 to 2014, overall inflation rose by 115%, but tuition and fees increased by 365% and college textbooks have gone up by 82% in just the last 10 years.