Editorial

Changing the College Textbook Industry

Beat The BookStore - <a href='http://www.bison.com' style='font-weight:normal;'>Franchise</a> Profile

“The problem with college bookstores,” says Mike Winward, CEO of Beat The Bookstore,” is that no one cares about the student. At the typical college bookstore there are long lines, few helpful employees, and the prices of books are sky-high. Why? Because there’s no competition.”

Seeing an opportunity to create a business that would help rather than frustrate students, Winward, along with partner and Beat The Bookstore President David Monk, started Beat The Bookstore, a franchised business that buys back textbooks from students for more money than they’d get at a college bookstore and then sells the books to other students for less than they’d pay elsewhere.

Beat The Bookstore, headquartered in West Valley City, Utah, just outside of Salt Lake City, has been Franchising for about three years and has 23 locations open or in progress with another 30 locations sold. Since the stores can easily be manager-run, some franchisees have purchased four or five locations.

“We locate the stores as close as possible to a campus,” says Monk, “and we help our franchisees with site selection. We only need about 2,000 sq ft of space because we don’t sell the t-shirts and trinkets and fudge that the campus bookstores stock.”

There’s also a ready supply of college students eager to be hired. “It’s a nice fit for both the students looking for extra money and for our store owners who don’t have to go far to find employees,” says Winward. “Our operations are all based on proprietary software which is very simple to operate. The employees can be trained in 20-30 minutes. Another advantage is that you hire the employees for the rush periods only so the jobs are temporary. No need to worry about firing less than satisfactory people because they will be gone in a few weeks anyway.” During non-rush periods you can usually get by with one or two employees.

The rush periods occur at the end of a semester when the store will be flooded with kids wanting to sell textbooks, through the start of the next semester when the used books are sold. Because Beat The Bookstore pays more for used books and then resells them for less than the campus bookstore, the students are thrilled to do their buying and selling there.

"The real 'bad guy' in this industry is the wholesale companies who really control the way the stores operate," said Winward. Almost all college bookstores are either owned by a college textbook wholesale company (a distributor/middle man of used and new textbooks) or they have a contract with one of them. For that reason, those bookstores have a quota on the number of used books they’ll buy back, amounting to only a small percentage of the books needed for the next semester. If you get to the store too late, they either won’t buy your book or you’ll get a significantly lower price than the students who sold early.

Another way students are unfairly burdened by campus bookstores is that publishers, in order to sell more books, frequently publish “new editions” of books without making substantial changes to the content. Each new edition has a new, higher price. To remedy the situation, Beat The Bookstore determines which other university might be using the older edition and ships books there. This gives students a better chance of recouping some of their money.

So how do they "beat" the campus bookstore? "The needs of the customer come first,” says Monk. “We buy the majority of our inventory directly from the students. If, for example, a university has a class of a thousand students, we’ll buy back as many books as we can from past students. If we still need more for the upcoming class, we next look at other Beat The Bookstore locations. Our last option is to buy books from the wholesalers or publishers.”

Word of mouth brings students to the stores but the franchisees also use some creative marketing campaigns to create awareness that there is an alternative to the high prices at the campus store. One way they advertise is by driving a bright green truck and trailer around campus bearing the bold Beat The Bookstore logo during busy times. The name explains it all and the students get the concept instantly.

“We consider ourselves an antiestablishment, rogue type of business,” says Monk. “We do things that will connect with the students. They totally get us. Students have been gouged for so long that they are anxious for someone to give them a decent deal.”

From the franchisee perspective, this is also a great business. First you get to work with bright, fun students who are thrilled to be able to get some of their textbooks at a great price. Second, the textbook business is cyclical. During the rush period you will work 40-60 hour weeks but the rest of the time you can enjoy a relaxing 20-30 hour week.

“Our franchise attracts many executives who are tired of corporate America and also some people who are semi retired. They want to be involved and they want to make a great living but they also want some free time. We can provide that,” says Winward.

New franchisees receive thorough training – first by working at an existing store and then completing a week of training at the corporate headquarters. Beat The Bookstore even provides someone to “hold the hand” of the new franchisee during the first week of opening. Stores open during one of three “rush” times so ramp up of a new store can occur fairly quickly.

“We did a recent survey of our franchisees,” says Monk, “and asked them what they liked about owning a Beat The Bookstore business. Their top three answers were:

They make good money
They like doing something that helps kids
They like their new lifestyle

It’s just a great business to be in.”

You need no special skills to be a successful Beat The Bookstore franchisee but you should enjoy working with students. Those people who have been successful middle or upper managers will do well in this business.

“We’re not the market leader,” says Winward, whose business card reads “CDO – Chief Daydreaming Officer.” “We’re the market spoiler and students get that. We provide real value to our customers.”

“We did something very simple,” adds Monk, who playfully refers to himself as the Minister of Propaganda. “We put the student first.”

Since every public college and university is a possible location for a Beat The Bookstore, there are still many sites available.