Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

University of Dayton Bookstore had been a loyal partner store to its wholesaler for four decades. They had no particular qualms about their wholesaler or how they did business, but when the store needed more used titles to help students’ textbook scholarships go further, officials took a closer look at the alternative sources they'd utilized to fill gaps in their orders.

Students at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, have the opportunity to win free textbooks for the 2016-17 school year.

On average, there's not a lot of churn among college retail administrators. If you're subscribed to Foreword and reading this blog, odds are you've been in your position for a few years — and each buyback isn't exactly your first rodeo. But whether you've done two or two dozen, it pays to get a fresh perspective. Having started in June, MBS Supply Chain Analyst Stephanie Webber is fairly new to the textbook industry in general — and she got to work her first buyback ever just a few weeks later, when she volunteered to work the University of Missouri-Columbia's summer session buy. Keep reading after the jump to see what she learned about the process, and how it relates to what she does for MBS and its partner institutions every day.

On July 15, Mizzou fans took over Busch Stadium to watch the Cardinals go up against the Marlins. This event was part of the launch of a new initiative to co-brand college sports with Major League Baseball. To celebrate the new licensing partnership, the staff at The Mizzou Store and New Era Caps offered Mizzou fans a chance to win two tickets to the game, a one-night stay in a St. Louis area hotel and three MU/Cardinals caps.

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.

When the Flyer Spirit Store at the University of Dayton decided it was time to open up a new space, they didn’t have to look far.

Like many stores, the Randolph-Macon Campus Store had a loyalty program. Students earned points on applicable purchases, which they could use to go online within a year of earning the points to create an order for gift cards, in $5 increments. The store would then create the gift certificate in-store on its POS, which they'd either mail to students or send the students an email letting them to know they could pick it up themselves. Those gift cards also had a one-year shelf life before expiring.

In their combined 40+ years of experience, De Azna College Bookstore Director Kelly Swanson and Foothill College Bookstore Director Romy Paule have seen a lot of change in the industry.

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.

What do you do when you find yourself with an overabundance of a certain product? In most cases, you can either just send the surplus back or decide to get creative and find a way to make it work to your store’s advantage. That’s exactly the situation the staff at The Book Mark found themselves in, when they accidentally ordered over 300 candy bars from one of their vendors.