UMD STORES — GOING ABOVE and BEYOND
As the director of the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) Stores, Jeffrey Romano knows that providing exceptional customer service is the key to a successful shopping experience.
“Good customer service seems to be a lost art in retail today,” he said. “Our main goal is to provide the high level of service that our campus expects.”
Institutionally operated, UMD Stores focuses on taking the “above and beyond” — as Romano called it — approach to taking care of customers at three locations in the Kirby Student Center on campus.
The street-level store sells apparel, gifts/greeting cards and art products, and is also the location of the convenience store that UMD Stores operates. The lower-level store features course materials, general books, school and office supplies, and computer and electronics products.
Thirdly, the express store is a flex space with a small convenience store that offers different promotional products throughout the school year. It also houses book buyback at the end of each semester, textbook reservation distribution just before each semester starts and textbook returns for the first week of the semester.
Overall, UMD Stores occupies 11,442 square feet of retail sales floor space, 7,136 square feet of storage and work processing space, and 2,174 square feet of office space. ...
SUN DEVIL CAMPUS STORES — A UNIQUE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE
as a bookstore serving one of the largest campuses in the United States, the Sun Devil Campus Stores at Arizona State University (ASU) continues to meet and exceed the needs of students in the midst of what has been a year of change.
Earlier this year, the university unveiled a new “Fear the Fork” pitchfork logo, replacing its mascot Sparky the Sun Devil as the new athletic emblem that will be featured on uniforms, football helmets and, of course, apparel that will be on display at the bookstore.
On July 1, 2011, Follett Higher Education Group (FHEG) took over operations of the Sun Devil Campus Stores, and one of the immediate dividends that came about with the new management was the complete remodeling of the Tempe store on the main campus.
Even with all of these major changes taking place this year, Sun Devil Campus Stores Director Val Ross noted that the store remains unique in nature.
“There is only one ASU, and there is only one ASU bookstore,” he pointed out. “There is a lot of uniqueness built around that.”
The Sun Devil Campus Stores is made up of five stores on four different campuses. The main bookstore and Computer Store are located on the Tempe campus; another store is located on the Downtown campus in Phoenix; a fourth store is located on the Polytechnic campus in Mesa; and the fifth location is at the West campus in Glendale. ...