New management, same brand: Barnes & Noble College takes over Student Stores

More than a year has passed since UNC set its eyes toward privatizing the Student Stores.

In July 2015, Follett, an educational supplies and solutions company, sent UNC an unsolicited proposal to manage the stores, which had been run by the University for 100 years. UNC issued its own Request for Proposals in January, inviting other companies to apply to manage the stores.

In April, the Request for Proposals Advisory Committee and administrators chose Barnes & Noble College out of a list of eight applicants. The company officially began managing the stores July 1.

A new 'Student Stores'

Although the Student Stores retained its brand under the new management, changes can be seen below the surface.

For the first time in the history of the Student Stores, its director is an employee of a private company. Also for the first time, the director, Michele Gretch Carter, is a woman.

Gretch Carter said she hopes the stores become a gathering place for students. To achieve that, she said plans for large-scale construction are in the works and will begin mostly in the spring.

In the meantime, parts of the stores, like the front cash register area, have been rearranged to look better, Gretch Carter said.

She said students and community members will be able to engage with Barnes & Noble College about these changes going forward through an advisory board and a yearly town hall.

Beyond physical changes in the stores, Barnes & Noble College offers new programs for students. Under the private company, textbooks — excluding electronic listings — will be ten percent cheaper than the company’s usual pricing. She said Barnes & Noble College will also offer textbook buyback all year and a price matching system with Amazon and the Barnes & Noble website.

“Hopefully it’ll help (students) not have to shop around as much and when they’re purchasing from us between the ten percent discount in addition to the price match, they feel that they’re confident in supporting the Student Stores and they’re getting that affordability,” she said.

One thing that will not change about the stores is its commitment to student scholarships.

In the past five years, the University-owned Student Stores contributed anywhere from $200,000 to $400,000 to student scholarships.

Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus Enterprises Brad Ives estimated that in the 2017 fiscal year, Student Stores under new management will be able to contribute $2.5 million, including a $1 million signing bonus.

The private company also provided its own cafe that serves Starbucks products. The Daily Grind Espresso Cafe, which previously occupied the space of the new UNC Cafe, closed June 10. Gretch Carter said Green Mountain Coffee products were added to the Pit Stop to create a more diverse selection for students.

Former Student Stores Sales Floor Manager Mike Handy said though he thought the Stores would benefit from the coming remodel, Barnes & Noble College wouldn’t be able to offer the same amount of flexibility in business decisions the University-owned Stores could.

“Being a corporation, I think it might take them a while to smooth things out because they’re tied to policies that are set amongst a whole bunch of stores — they’re less able to be that kind of nimble, like ‘Let’s just change this right now,’” he said.

Restructuring affects store employees

Almost immediately after the University revealed Student Stores might be privatized, community members responded — voicing their concern over the fate of the stores’ legacy and its employees’ fates.

According to the contract between Barnes & Noble College and the University, legacy employees of the stores would be given comparable pay and hours to what they received with UNC. However, the new structure of employment proved difficult to transfer in some cases.

Handy, who worked at the stores for 18 years, said he had planned to stay once the new management took over but changed his mind when his job responsibilities changed. He said some people would do the same thing under Barnes & Noble College as they had under the University, while others would do quite different things.

“Their structure was different than ours, so they were trying to plug us into the way their structure was set up,” he said.

Gretch Carter said a few legacy employees left during the transition process, but the University supported them so that every employee had a choice. She said employees that had long worked for the University were integral in the transition process.

“It is a very large operation and so I think there are a lot of experts here that make the transition easier for us because there’s a lot of knowledge, there’s a lot of commitment to what they’re doing and that doesn’t change regardless of if they’re part of the University or part of us,” she said.

Gretch Carter said the stores will continue to hire student employees, and the employment structure of the stores may be further reorganized.

“It doesn’t feel like we’re building something brand-new,” she said. “It’s that we’re part of something that was great and hopefully that we can continue to support to make it something that the campus really feels we’re serving well.”

@Sofia_Edelman

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