 “We’re doing something new this year,” said Jean Boylan of Beyond the Blackboard in Arvada, Colorado. “We’re opening a new store. We’ll have a grand opening sale in June – it’s the best way to see what sells.”
Jean’s busiest season runs from July 15 to September 1 each year, and she starts placing orders for it as early as January. “Last year, we ordered in smaller quantities,” she told us. “This year we did the same. All our orders are completed as of now, but we expect we’ll have to continue ordering and restocking throughout the entire back-to-school season.”
Jean puts the products out on the shelves right away for sale, and staff training starts in July.
Product ideas come from the NSSEA’s Ed Expo, ASTRA and “working heavily with reps.”
When we spoke to Jean in May, she was thinking about increasing her back-to-school advertising, along with extending her stores’ hours and hiring more staff.
Because Elizabeth Sevier expects that sales during back-to-school will be lower this year compared to last, her store, The Tardy Bell in Texarkana, will be carrying less inventory, “but not a lot less.”
She starts ordering in March, when she attends NSSEA’s Ed Expo. She staggers the delivery schedule throughout the spring so that boxes of product don’t hit her stockroom all at once, and invoices don’t come due all at the same time. She usually doesn’t order more product until the back-to-school season is over.
Quantities are determined by trial and error, admits Elizabeth, ruefully. “More error than trial.”
Patti Ludwig of Education World in Terre Haute, Indiana, told us, “I expect sales this year to be good. The economy has not had much of an effect on our business. We’re pretty much on track.”
What has changed, she told us, is the way she does her buying for her two busy seasons – back-to-school and fourth quarter.
“First, we try to stay stocked throughout the year. We also work to know our stock pretty well and to know what sells quickly. We pay attention to trends, and what sells at what times of year.
“When we buy,” she continued, “we’re looking to ‘fine tune’ our inventory by getting rid of things and then special ordering them quickly. In general, we’ve backed off quantity and replenish quicker.”
Her busiest ordering months are April, May and June. Throughout the year she’s open seven days a week, and extends her store’s hours for a week in July for “customer appreciation week.”
Patti made some changes to her physical store this year. To showcase her wide selection of games – a big category for Education World – the store was reconfigured to include a family game area where families can go in, sit down and play together. “It’s good for us, and good for the community,” she said.
Product ideas come from “hundreds of catalogs and NSSEA,” she told us. Her staff – six part-timers and two full-timers – is trained on new product before it arrives in the store, and sometimes reps come in to help. “We’ve lost some of our independent reps this year, which is upsetting,” Patti said. “We believe those vendors will lose business by keeping their sales in-house only.”
Cheryl Goldstein from Learning Essentials in Hudson, New York, is usually ordering now for her back-to-school season, but this year she’s laying low because of the economy. “We have a lot of inventory already,” she said. “People aren’t coming in as regularly and I’m not sure I’m going to order any more product right now for back-to-school.”
Cheryl normally attends Toy Fair each year but did not in 2009. Otherwise, product ideas come from vendor catalogs, and from feedback from teachers and parents. Cheryl stockpiles the orders and places them with Educators Resource.
“It’s been very hard this year,” said Cheryl, whose store is small – she and her sister run a daycare in the same building – and has been impacted by competitors on the Internet. She said: “Companies with websites make it easy for tired teachers to just head home after school and order on their computers, and the schools award purchase orders to catalog companies. It’s hard on local retailers.”
Still, she hopes for the best for back-to-school. “There’s one school here that’s being taken down, but another that’s enlarging,” Cheryl said. “Teachers should need decorations for their new classrooms, so I’m hoping they’ll shop here. We’re also expecting parents to buy materials soon to help their children transition from this school year to the next.” |
