Advocacy Articles

Does Your Administration Know You Are Going the Extra Mile?
Mark Palmore, Institutional Store Advocate

At the recent CAMEX meeting in New Orleans there were two sessions devoted to institutional store advocacy. Bruce Barnard, CSP, Director, Colby Bookstore, and I presented a session titled "Going the Extra Mile for Institutional Store Advocacy." During the session, Bruce discussed the document he and his staff prepared ("Colby Bookstore Historical Perspective") and what went into the development of the document. The Colby document is excellent and can be used as a model for you to prepare an annual report for your campus administration. Thanks to Bruce and Colby College for sharing the document with your colleagues.

After Bruce concluded his excellent presentation, I discussed two surveys conducted by Connect2One comparing prices of apparel and supply items at independent (institutional and private) stores to prices for the same products at stores that are currently leased. The results of those two surveys clearly prove that students pay more for their supplies and apparel at lease stores. Are your administrators aware of that research? If you would like copies of the pricing studies or the Colby document, simply contact me, and I will send you a copy (Mark Palmore).

The other session on institutional store advocacy was titled "Are Your Administrators Aware of the Total Value of Your Store?" Manny Cunard, Executive Director of NACAS, and Dr. Tim Carroll, President of The Duvall Group (bookstore consulting), discussed today's campus administrator and the issues he/she deals with regarding the future of the campus store. Both Manny and Tim discussed the value of stores being proactive and prepared to meet the challenge from the contract management companies. They stressed the value of using all resources available including independent consultants, NACAS' new CSOPHE (www.csophe.org) Web site and, of course, the resources of NACS and Connect2One.

Before concluding the session with a great question and answer period, I briefly discussed the new NACS Store Alignment Tool developed by the NACS Institutional Stores Committee, and available on the NACS Web site (www.nacs.org). The Store Alignment Tool is a document stores can use as an outline to help them improve their communication with the administration to show how the store fits into the mission/vision and the goals of campus.

Both sessions received a very positive response. Thank you to Bruce, Manny, and Tim for helping to make them successful. If you were unable to attend, tapes are available from NACS.

If you need more information on the Connect2One Institutional Store Advocacy program, please contact me at (800) 563-9034 or mpalmore@connect2one.com. There is also information available in the Advocacy section of this Web site.