Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

MBS didn't become the premier textbook wholesaler and college store systems provider overnight, and it definitely didn't get there without lots of help.

Every October, National Student Day is celebrated at college stores around the country. For the third year in a row, the Rocker Shop on the campus of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology got in the holiday spirit and put together their own event to show their appreciation for their students. This year, they celebrated their students in a couple of ways.

Technology and the internet are a part of everyday life for collegiate retail stores. Today, concerns for those stores include focusing on things like increasing sales through the store website or securely organizing their data or inventory in a digital format.

There’s still plenty of time till Halloween, but the Lake Superior College Bookstore is already getting a head start on the festivities. October 1 marked the first day of their “Pick-a-pumpkin” sale, where lucky customers can receive up to 25 percent off LSC apparel and merchandise.

Nights are getting longer. Cobwebs and candy corn adorn offices everywhere. Campus smells like crisp leaves and that telltale chill in the air, (depending on where you are in the country, of course.) Autumn is among us.

In 2008, the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association was looking for a fun and incentivized way get Badger graduates involved in scholarship fundraising. What they came up with was fairly simple, but the response they got was outstanding. The idea they settled on was a t-shirt that would be uniquely designed before each school year, and then retired as the next year’s shirt went on sale. They decided to call their creation the "Red Shirt,” in honor of the school’s primary color that is prominently featured on each iteration.

Surveys are a great way to get answers from your customers about specific topics or questions. They’re relatively easy to execute, require little effort from participants and can provide valuable insights. But there’s an even better way to get the information you need, without the limited scope that comes with the survey structure — and this method only requires a little bit more planning to achieve positive results.

VCSU Bookstore makes an appearance in downtown Valley City each year as part of the local Chamber of Commerce's "Crazy Days Sale."

Three members of the MBS marketing team spent last week in Boston, attending one of the biggest marketing conventions in the country, which was hosted by HubSpot (the marketing software platform that we use). They’ll each be sharing their experiences from Inbound 2015, and talking about what they learned as well as how they plan to teach us how to apply that knowledge to help our partner stores grow. We’ll pick up the third installment of our three-part series with Marketing Analyst Andrew Hesse.

Three members of the MBS marketing team spent last week in Boston, attending one of the biggest marketing conventions in the country, which was hosted by HubSpot (the marketing software platform that we use.) They'll each be sharing their experiences from Inbound 2015, and talking about what they learned as well as how they plan to teach us how to apply that knowledge to help our partner stores grow. We'll pick up the second installment of our three-part series with Marketing Coordinator Abraham Dyer.