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For the first time in the country’s history, a university bookstore has been leased by another university. The University of Maine at Machias Bookstore is now operated by the University of Maine Bookstore.
UMaine has signed a contract to manage the UMM bookstore, and is steadily rebuilding the store after the previous company, College Books of America, brought the store to a bare minimum of items.
Colleen Gagnon, floor supervisor at UMaine’s Bookstore, said there was a great need for improvment at Machias.
“They didn’t even have anything green in there,” she said. “That’s their color. It would be like if we had nothing blue.”
UMaine’s first task was to hire a new manager. A committee of UMM staff and faculty selected two candidates for the position, and the Bookstore selected Jeffrey Anderson for the position.
“We’re moving old inventory, and rotating stock as we get new items,” Anderson said. “We’re getting trade books, clothing and gift items. We are benefiting from the University of Maine’s buying power to get used books.”
Bill Hockensmith, the University of Maine Bookstore director, said that UMaine’s Bookstore has some impressive figures. Students were able to buy 57 to 58 percent of their books used this September, he said. The national average is around 22 percent, and UMaine students bought 49 percent of their books used.
Though they are bringing about some changes, Hockensmith said that they would not try to take complete control of Machia’s store.
“We’re not making real dramatic changes,” Hockensmith said. “Machias is a proud campus, and they have a lot of input into this process.”
Hockensmith said he would be bringing less expensive school supplies, clothing and gift items to the Machias bookstore, as well as helping them to take part in e-commerce.
“It’s very difficult to sell books online. We could put all of the books for sale online, but you get down to this professor, this class, this section. … It gets difficult. We see our Web site as more of an informational tool,” he said. People go and see what books they need, the Bookstore hours. We want as much information on there as possible.”
The UMaine Bookstore will be managing the UMM bookstore for five years. After that, UMM can choose whether to stay with UMaine, pick another vendor or manage it themselves.
Hockensmith said the Machias bookstore has made about 7 percent of the UMaine Bookstore’s sales.
“We don’t expect to see much profit in the next couple of years, but we’re proud to help,” he said.
Anderson and Hockensmith talk on the phone almost daily, and have monthly meetings at each college. Hockensmith said that this experience has helped the UMaine Bookstore employees look at their jobs in a different way and learn new skills from the transition process.
He said that he hopes to get the UMM Bookstore into partnerships with other groups, like UMaine Bookstore does. An example of this is the UMaine Bookstore effort to send a Maine breakfast to a UMS employee stationed in Iraq.
The Machias Bookstore is called the Murdock Bookstore, and three student employees and one adult work there, quite a change from UMaine’s large payroll.
“It’s a very different college. There are around 1,000 students there and everyone knows each other. I like it there,” Hockensmith said. “It’s a great college, I enjoy being a part of it.”
This is the first time an arrangement like this has been made. At the University of Vermont, they sell Burlington College’s books as part of a friendly agreement, but this is the first time a university bookstore has leased another bookstore. University bookstores are generally either institutionally owned or leased out to companies such as Barnes and Noble.
