College bookstores add more dorm decor after Bed Bath & Beyond closure
College students and parents who used to shop in Bed Bath & Beyond stores for bed sheets or storage organizers will have to purchase dorm decor somewhere else this school year. College bookstore operators hope some will do that right on campus.
Follett Higher Education, which runs roughly 1,100 campus bookstores, in June announced a new collection of room-organization products at 225 stores including University of Georgia and George Washington University as well as new beauty installations in 30 stores. Barnes & Noble College, a separate company from the off-campus Barnes & Noble that runs more than 700 physical college and K-12 stores, made a similar announcement in July that it would expand its campus living category in 60 locations such as at Louisiana State University and University of Pennsylvania.
Bed Bath & Beyond closed hundreds of stores last year following its bankruptcy that April, with Overstock taking the name for its e-commerce business. This created a white space for other retailers eager to win over the 35 million customers Bed Bath & Beyond reported in 2022. Leaders at both college bookstore chains told Modern Retail they hope to fill that void directly on campus.
Many students and parents will still shop at Target, Walmart or Amazon, but executives at Follett and Barnes & Noble College said they hoped to win over some shoppers on the convenience factor.
Jeremy Bare, chief merchandising officer for Follett Higher Education, said she doesn’t expect the college bookstores to ever go toe-to-toe with Amazon in terms of sales volume. But, Bare believes that Follett could become a strong player in the space by reaching students as soon as they step on campus.
“There will always be students who think that decorating their campus spaces is a sport and they want to spend the time really doing that themselves and shopping at multiple outlets, either in-store or online,” Bare told Modern Retail. “There are other students who would really like to have the complexity of that taken away, and that’s who we would like to help.”
The digitization of textbooks at many colleges and universities left the bookstores with more space for other products. Both Follett and Barnes & Noble College expect to roughly triple the space for room decor products in their stores. Some will even have full-fledged room setups demonstrating how products would look in dorm rooms.
Helping campuses with logistics
Location and relationships with school officials are some of the key advantages college bookstores have in selling to students.
Celeste Risimini-Johnson, chief merchandise and operations officer for Barnes & Noble College, said the company is already in conversations with campuses about next steps, even planning to test a service where it would deliver products right to students’ rooms or to dorm lobbies.
“There are a lot of Targets near campuses, but certainly we’re right there; we’re certainly the easiest and the fastest,” said Risimini-Johnson. “Our store teams are really integrated and engaged with our campus community, and so having that level of service is something that no other competitor could provide.”
Many campus bookstores will offer the option to buy online and pickup in-store. Bare, the Follett executive, said this could be a big selling point for international students preparing to live on campus. She also said it can help college and university officials who tell the company they struggle to manage the number of packages shipped to campus during the first couple weeks of the semester.
Figuring out what students want
Selling dorm decor and essentials in campus bookstores isn’t new for the operators, but crafting a large assortment of products in the category is.
Last year, Follett executives dipped their toes into campus living with The Container Store as a partner, launching pop-up shops in 36 campus bookstores. This year, Follett is building its own campus living line and sourcing the products itself instead of using a partner.
“This is the year where we do the assortments ourselves and really identify how big this could be in the future,” Bare said. “They’re curated based on what we know about the campus, so some will have larger assortments and will have smaller assortments.”
Bare said Follett is trying to grow this category significantly but is still using this year to learn about what kind of products students want down to the color, fabric and price point. “Our goal this year is to make this financially five times as big as it was a year ago,” she said adding that there are several hundred more campus bookstores this collection could expand to.
Products from dorm decor brand Dormify like bedding, towels, storage and headboards with charging ports will be available in both Barnes & Noble and Follett stores this fall. “The bookstores want to carry as many of our categories as possible, they were really going after a one-stop-shop approach,” Dormify founder Amanda Zuckerman said.
Dormify is primarily a DTC business but is now in more than 75 campus bookstores. This year, Dormify also struck a partnership to sell its products through 200 Office Depot stores, as it seeks to grow its physical presence. “If they want to shop near campus or on campus, we want to be there; if they want to shop before they get to move-in day, we want to be there,” Zuckerman said.
Gina Logan, principal retail analyst for Kantar, said the curated campus living lines at bookstores tap into a craving for ease and convenience. These same students are often looking to TikTok for dorm decor videos to help them decide what to buy.
“Gen Z is overwhelmed right now; they’re overwhelmed by the state of the economy, they’re overwhelmed by the state of the world and they’re overwhelmed with choice,” Logan said. “If you go on Amazon and you look for a chair, you have pages and pages and pages of options. Gen Z isn’t looking for that, they want something curated.”