Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

The Chemeketa Bookstore is seeing a significant increase in both its rental and ebook sales brought on by just a few shelf talkers, small signs advertising the rental and ebook programs and their advantages on the shelves holding traditional textbooks.

Want a fun way to welcome incoming freshmen? Why not give them the chance to win great prizes? The staff at the URI Bookstore opened their doors and made the newcomers feel right at home by holding a raffle during Freshman Orientation.

With prizes including an iPad Air, a gift card to the bookstore and free textbooks for the fall semester, both staff and students were excited and engaged. This was a smart way to introduce the incoming students to the store and also kicked off a school year that promises to be chock-full of customer interaction with other targeted promotions and contests scheduled throughout.

Power lines tangled and snapped throughout Columbia, but MBS was unaffected for the 3.5 hours it would have been without power. Many homes — and some trees on MBS property — weren't so lucky.

How will you celebrate the 4th of July this year? Whether you spend the day enjoying some BBQ, setting off fireworks or overloading on watermelon and Popsicles, we hope you have a safe and fun holiday. Before you head off for the long weekend, though, check out how your fellow college stores are showing their patriotic pride with sales or events inspired by the red, white and blue:

It won’t be too long before another flood of students will wash over your campus and store. But despite the pending start of a new school year, we’re still in the heat of summer, and students are sure to work up a sweat moving in, running back and forth between orientation events and getting out and about on campus. This makes a perfect time for your store to help them cool off and show them you have more to offer than just books with a Welcome Back Beach Bash! While you’re helping students cool down and relax, you can bring your store outside and heat things up with a hot summer sidewalk sale to promote your store’s apparel, merchandise and textbook reservation. We know this time of year is one of the busiest for everyone on campus, so we’ve made it simple: just follow our outline and you’ll be sure to have a successful event.

 Hawk’s Hub is off to a bright start with their new rental program. They kicked off their first semester of offering rentals by giving students neon smiley-face stickers, with the text “I rented books today!” The simplicity of the design was deliberate, according to Bookstore Manager Nyla Ruccia.

How do you make a visible difference in your community? How about by volunteering to do some manual labor? On May 28, the staff of the Kirkwood Bookstore and EagleTech spent a day in the sun working with Habitat for Humanity. This was the second year that the stores reached out to their staff and students, and got them involved in restoring flood-damaged homes.

Buyback can be a tense time for everyone, so why not switch gears and make it a little more fun? The Blue Colt Bookstore did just that when they decided to offer their students a chance to win one of eight retro-styled bicycles, just for coming in and selling back their textbooks.

Whether you owe him your abiding love for baseball, or the fact that you can operate a motor vehicle in a semi-responsible fashion, your dad is undoubtedly a big part of who you are today. This Sunday, if you can, take the opportunity to let him know how much you appreciate everything he’s done for you over the years.