College Stores

Trends in College (From page 106) condensing. For gifts and clothing, we’re seeing a slight increase in that now. I think it’s because we have clothing and giftware predominantly in the store. We’ve done more social media in the past year, and that seemed to have a good response. We’ve seen our clothing on an incline [in sales].” She added because of the nature of Bismarck State, the bookstore’s operation didn’t change that much during COVID: “Our campus is around 3,800 students, and approximately 1,600 to 1,700 of them are online. We’re very used to working with the online students already, and shipping items out. We had a lot of procedures in place already.

“Our college president actually gave our staff a pat on the back because we were ready [for the shift to all virtual learning]. We were one of the very few schools who stayed open to the public during the pandemic. Now our campus is back to normal, and students can do online or face-to-face learning. We did do the precautionary things like social distancing, limited number of people in the store—one person in, one person out. It hasn’t seemed to deflect any of the shoppers we have coming in. Now, I think people are more comfortable going out, so we’re back to seeing more traffic in our community.”

Andrea Stipp , director, Shocker Store at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kan., said the decline in traffic affected sales significantly. “For us, our campus is in hybrid mode with more online offerings. We do have students living in the dorm but it’s down about 50 percent. The Student Union traffic is down about 70 percent compared to this time last year. Our business took a significant hit, and with no sporting events, it drastically impacted our sales.”

With in-person shopping and learning at a standstill, college stores had to increase their e-commerce offerings. Stores with a limited digital presence quickly built up their stores; those with robust online activity adapted their marketing and promotion strategies even more. Operators said this is one area that will likely continue after the COVID restrictions are lifted.

Askew and Sivertson are focusing more on the store’s website and social media marketing: “Our online sales have grown 11 percent over the past year. We have started doing Facebook Live events with our vendors and started partnering with many new vendors to offer many dropship items. This offers the customers may new items without the investment of lots of inventory. We have done this with clothing and gift items, and it has worked very well.” Sandness said the BSC Bookstore will also continue to build their social media presence. “We will be keeping the social media because we’ve seen such a spike in that. We’ll continue to use our work-study students for the ‘Fashion Fridays’ on Facebook where they show off the items they like. We do encourage the students to stick more with the online options—order and pick up in-store or have it delivered.”

Retailers said the tried-and-true merchandise items remained strong sellers throughout the year. “Pre-COVID, our top-selling items were basic T-shirts. They are at a great price point. A student bringing a visitor to campus would stop in the bookstore and the visitor would actually want to buy a shirt,” said Stipp. “During COVID, it’s been PPE stuff—face masks, coverings, Shocker-branded items. Also, more gift and memorabilia-type of things. I think that’s because as students announce their college decisions, there are a lot of celebrations with family. Kind of like a Signing Day, so we are selling more of the ‘knick-knack’ kind of items.”

Because Wesleyan RJ Julia is a traditional bookstore, not just a college store, Fazio said books sold well. “Not just the best-sellers, but we pride ourselves on being able to recommend books that are under the radar. We have a lot of kids’ books,” she explained. “Also, Wesleyan University insignia apparel is a top seller. We’re selling a lot of sweatshirts right now. Early acceptance letters have gone out, so then the university apparel is ordered. We’ve got reunions and things coming up. In the gift items, we sell a lot of candles, food and beverage items—a lot of glassware—and a lot of masks. Some have the school insignia, some do not.”

Looking ahead at life post-COVID, college store retailers are anxious to get back to regular routines. The last 12 months taught them some important lessons. “We’ve always been a company that’s been able to respond immediately but look further out. The difference now is, the further you look out, we would have to pivot very quickly,” Fazio said. “We’ve had to do that a lot in the last year. We’ve always been able to do that very well. We’re trying to be more specific with marketing and reacting to what customers like to see. We’re trying to be as innovative as we can. With the campus side, we’ll try to work with the university as to what serves the community best. This experience really confirmed for me that we have a tight community, and we appreciate all the support. Our staff really stepped up, and they all learned to make it a little easier to adjust to things. We had to rely on what we sell, and trust that what we were do-

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