Publication: The College Hill Independent

Genre: Feature

Under New Management:

Brown Considers Contracting with Barnes and Noble College, Inc.

Max’s is gone. Allegra and Sovereign have moved. City Sports replaced the GAP,
and Berk’s will expand in May. The Thayer Street retail district is evolving, and Brown
administration fears that the Brown Bookstore, whose last renovation was ten years ago,
lags behind. In response to such fears, on March 3 the Bookstore Review Committee
released a report recommending that the independent Brown Bookstore be outsourced to
Barnes and Noble College, Inc. (B&NCBI).
The Bookstore Review Committee was formed in early 2005, following a
recommendation by the President’s Cabinet. Headed by Beppie Huidekoper, executive
vice president for finance and administration, the committee consists of fourteen faculty,
students and staff. Over the past year and a half, the committee has conducted extensive
interviews with Brown Bookstore leadership, representatives of large corporations, and
Brown students, faculty, and staff. The committee has also complied industry data and
toured other university stores to present a comprehensive study of the current state of the
Brown Bookstore.
The bookstore review committee explored four options: to have the university
retain ownership, to partner with or sell to an independent bookseller, or to contract with
a large, specialty chain. After considering the benefits and drawbacks of all four options,
the committee ultimately decided that joining forces with a chain specializing in higher
education bookstores would best serve the bookstore’s evolution and recommended
B&NCBI as the university’s best option.

Corporate America Knows Best

Overall, the report determined that current management is adequate, yet
many feel that there are also areas that they would like to see improved. Professors want
more scholarly articles, while consumers not affiliated with the University feel the
bookstore’s appearance caters primarily to members of the Brown community. Students
would welcome lower textbook prices, and almost everyone finds the physical layout
confusing and wants more modernized Brown merchandise. Jenn Baumstein ’08 doesn’t
like the women’s department’s drift to pastel, “gendered” clothing, while, on the other
end of the spectrum, Sarah Kate Wagner ’08 said that she just wants Brown flip-flops.
The point? Almost everyone wants something to change about the bookstore. The
question is how.
The review committee determined that outsourcing to B&NCBI was the
university’s best option, because a large chain “offers the most potential to provide
expertise, resources, systems, and capital to upgrade the Bookstore, as well as the
capacity to stay current with changes in the college merchandise and text- and trade-book
markets in the future.”
Barnes and Noble College, Inc., the leading corporation in its field, is an offspring
of the Barnes and Noble chain. The two are under different management, but they share
the same distribution, tracking, publishing, and design and construction networks. The
owner of B&NCBI, Leonard Riggio, is also chairman of Barnes and Noble. They manage
over 500 college bookstores nation-wide, including all other Ivy Leagues except for
Princeton, which is a co-op, and Cornell, which is owned by the university.

The review committee acknowledged that outsourcing to a large chain would

likely raise concerns over ‘selling out’ and thus emphasized that B&NCBI is not the same
company as Barnes and Noble. They stressed that Brown would be able to customize a
contract with the vendor to meet the Brown and non-Brown community’s needs and
concerns, and in a March 2006 article in The Brown Daily Herald, Elizabeth Huidekoper,
executive vice president for finance and administration and bookstore review committee
chair, assured that their recommendation was based not upon money but the interests of
the Brown community.

Hell No, We Won’t Go

The Save the Bookstore Coalition (SBC), unaffiliated with the university, formed
shortly after the review committee released its report. Composed of Brown students,
faculty and staff, as well as local activists and community members, the coalition
launched a campaign to prevent the university from outsourcing to B&NCBI.
"Outsourcing the bookstore makes little sense,” said co-chair Sian Silyn Roberts.
“Although we all know that the bookstore in its current form needs improvements, such
as longer hours, more seating, better selection of books from major university presses,
turning it over to corporate management would create new, even greater problems for
Brown University and for the College Hill community."
Perhaps the greatest concern is that a corporate image contradicts Brown’s
celebrated commitment to independence and individuality. "If you visit any [B&NCBI]
bookstores at Harvard, Yale, Boston University, Columbia or Penn, you will find yourself
immersed in an environment that is unmistakably Barnes & Noble. They just can't help
themselves. In fact, even these stores' web presence is uncannily similar," said Roberts.
Barnes and Nobles denies this charge, and prior to Dartmouth’s decision to sell to
B&NCBI, an article in The Dartmouth stated that the Barnes and Noble insignia would
not be visible after B&NCBI took over Dartmouth’s bookstore.
Susan Schlesinger, a seven-year veteran of the Brown Bookstore, said that the
bookstore has a customer base of professors from neighboring colleges that travel to
Brown specifically for the selection and service that an independent bookstore provides.
She believes that if B&NCBI took over the bookstore, those customers would disappear
because they can just go to Barnes and Noble at home.
The loss of independent ownership may also result in the loss of dedicated,
independent-minded employees, even though the review committee emphasized that
current employees’ skills are vital to the smooth operation of the bookstore. The
committee has recommended that the university tailor their contract with B&NCBI to
include one-year continued employment with comparable benefits, and they claim that
B&NCBI’s employee retention record past one year is “exemplary.”
Roberts, however, is not satisfied. “Here’s my question,” he said, “what happens
on the 366th day? ” The University of Pennsylvania’s 1996 transition to management by
B&NCBI may confirm this fear, as The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that B&NCBI
offered jobs to just 38 of 54 employees. Only 17 accepted. Susan Schlesinger, who has
been with the Brown Bookstore for seven years, doesn’t want to become simply a
number on the Barnes and Noble payroll and isn’t positive if she would stay. “But I do
have kids to feed,” she admits, “I’m not sure what I would do.”

Tit-for-Tat
Harvard Sophomore Rajiv Venkataramanan, however, has no qualms with The
Coop, Harvard’s university bookstore that has been operated by B&NCBI since 1995.
“Books of all subjects can be found there, and if it’s not in their stock, they order it for
you within a very short amount of time,” he said.
The prices of those quick-to-order books are one of the central factors in the
decision to outsource, and many believe that B&NCBI’s larger pool of resources would
result in lower prices. However, past cases indicate that although B&NCBI may initially
promise lower prices, it will not necessarily that way. “While the current self-operated
Brown Bookstore charges their student-customers some of the lowest textbook prices in
the industry, Barnes & Noble College Booksellers consistenly charge their customers
more for their textbooks,” remarked John Melson, member and technical coordinator of
the SBC. “Barnes & Noble, Inc.,” he argues, “sells textbooks on their website,
www.bn.com, for less than what their sister company charges their university
clients. You can bet that when Barnes & Noble, Inc. finds itself competing with one of
its own university stores, Barnes & Noble will always win at the university's expense."
An additional concern among those that oppose the move to outsource the store is
the way in which such a move may affect the local economy. The corporation’s hunger
for profit might have detrimental effects on the local economy. “Studies have
demonstrated that retail chains often return substantially less money to the local economy
than locally owned businesses,” Nelson explained. “One study found that independent
bookstore in Austin, Texas…returned $45 of every $100 in sales to the local economy—
almost 3.5 times more than the average Borders," Melson explained.
In an October 2005 article in The Brown Daily Herald, Larry Carr, University
bookstore and services director, said that everyone at the bookstore desires “a bookstore
that…will enhance the Thayer Street retail district.” The article also noted that the
committee determined that one of the bookstore’s functions is “to have a welcoming
atmosphere for patrons and Thayer Street.”
Many residents and students, however, worry that outsourcing to a large chain
will detract from Thayer Street’s unique vibe. Jagdish, the owner of Spectrum, says that
each time a Starbucks or Gap popped up “the whole character of the street changed.”
Spectrum has seen IHOP and Gap enter and leave the building that now houses City
Sports, which speaks volumes about the community’s commitment to independently
owned stores. However, with no competition and an integral role in the university, a
B&NCBI Brown Bookstore may have the staying power that the Gap couldn’t muster.
 Ultimately, it’s difficult to determine what would happen post-B&NCBI take
over. The corporation and the review committee say that a customized contract would
meet everyone’s needs, while the Save the Bookstore Coalition and its supporters believe
even contracts cannot prevent corporate America from taking over our alternative Brown
nation. The review committee recommended that both parties be given the opportunity to
voice their concerns and debate the pros and cons of outsourcing before the President’s
Cabinet holds a vote on the bookstore’s future in April or May.

Blair Hickman ’08 also wants cute Brown flip-flops

Information gathered from:

http://www.bkstore.com/
http://store.thecoop.com/coopstore/estore_aboutus.jsp
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/3adb25bc0f6c9?in_archive=1
http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2004062401040
www.savethebookstore.org
http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/3adb219218560?in_archive=1