Given UC Davis’s five-year extension of its first-in-the-country campus retail pilot with Amazon--and both Purdue University and UMass Amherst having contracted with Amazon recently--the mega retailer was a recurring subject at this year’s campus retail educational conference in Atlanta.
Camex (Campus Market Expo), which opened on February 20 at the Georgia World Congress Center, was co-located this year with EDexpo (a trade show focused on learning innovations). The joint event is expected to draw close to 7,000 retailers and exhibitors before it closes on February 24.
Presentations by Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store, as well as Jason Lorgan, director of UC Davis Stores, and Jon Alexander, senior manager of Amazon Campus, contributed to what National Association of College Stores deputy CEO and president of its indiCo subsidiary Ed Schlichenmayer termed a “fascination” with Amazon. He noted that “all three of Amazon’s forays into higher education are distinctly different.”
UC Davis maintains its own textbook program and is partnering with Amazon for items not sold in the campus’ seven stores. “Campus reaction has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Lorgan. For him, the partnership provides the school with another revenue stream. In coming months Amazon’s presence on campus will be expanded. In addition to more lockers, an Amazon area will be added to the middle of the flagship store, and the school will have staffed pick-up and return locations like the one at Purdue. “We’re trying to provide massive convenience to students on campus, anything they need for student life,” commented Alexander.
While Lorgan is pleased with his school’s arrangement, for other college store heads, the specter of Amazon taking over campus retail is a pain point. But not the only one. Decreased enrollments, lower funding, and the shift to digital course materials are all exerting pressure on college stores. The pressures of an industry in transition bubbled up at the annual meeting for the National Association of College Stores, which sponsors Camex. Gary Jones, manager of Paper Tree Bookstore, the campus store of Green River Community College in Auburn, Wash., and Kathy Grace, director of Swarthmore College Bookstore in Swarthmore, Pa., both spoke passionately about how community colleges and small stores are not adequately represented on the indiCo board, NACS’s two-year-old entity created to support independent college stores.
Despite a heated exchange with IndiCo board chair Mark Frisby, general manager of MSU Bookstore in Bozeman, Mt., who encouraged more candidates to step forward for leadership positions, NACS’s 2015-16 strategic initiatives were readily accepted. They include investing resources and intensifying efforts to position campus stores as academic resource centers and competitive retailers; advocating for current and emerging industry issues; enabling campus stores to play a leading role in nurturing the campus experience, and fostering the success of independent college stores.
This vision emerges out of NACS’s commitment to “Standing Strong Together.” In a letter to the NACS membership president Todd Summer, director of Aztec Shops at San Diego State University, called on stores to embrace change by standing strong together. “We must stand strong together as college stores of all sizes and missions, and as vendors and institutions, to do our part to make the higher education community stronger and more valued by the public,” he wrote.
Another theme of the conference and one echoed at all three mega-sessions was for college retailers to create disruption of their own and not to accept business as usual. Socialnomics author Erik Qualman, grand slam mountain climber Alison Levine, author of On the Edge, and graffiti artist Erik Wahl, author of Unthink, each encouraged college retailers, using the words of Samuel Beckett in Westward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
