[Pay] Back to School

Kaitlyn Summers and Jessica Cousins, Michigan State University freshmen from Macomb Township and Columbiaville, respectively, are roommates in Yakeley Hall. They didn’t know each other before this summer and spent a good deal of the past month on Facebook and texting, coordinating who was bringing what for the dorm room. They have accumulated a lot of “stuff” in that time and have some advice for future freshmen.

“Thank God we didn’t move in at the same time,” Summers said, who moved in a week before Cousins because of a job on campus. “And you don’t want a lot of storage bins on the floor.”

Combined, the two spent about $1,100 on move-in furnishings, which includes a $400 set of lofts, refrigerator, shelves and a futon.

They spent this at the “money savers,” which included Bed Bath and Beyond, Wal- Mart, Meijer and Target, Cousins said.

“We want our room to be the hot spot to hang out. We have a lot, but it still looks good. Just don’t open our closet,” she smiled.

I graduated from MSU about a year ago, and this scenario is hardly unique.

Why does the cost of furnishing a dorm room exceed the cost of new textbooks?

Why does back-to-school shopping season arouse retailers like the winter holiday season?

Why is there a campus-wide waste reduction initiative for move-in “day” (three days that ended yesterday) that is as involved as move-out day?

Living near MSU is a distinct experience this time of year. Roughly 15,000 students move into residence halls on campus, each with varying quantities of essential and non-essential furnishings. Perhaps — based on marketing techniques, trash collection data and the nature of moving into an eight-month home — the answer to those questions is “stuff” and the demand for it.

A rare opportunity

The MSU campus turns into a veritable city within roughly a week. There are six residential “neighborhoods” on 5,200 acres of MSU’s main campus. About 15,000 students and mentors — roughly a third of MSU’s student body — live in 25 residence halls, or dorms. Most of the students living in dorms are eight-month residents. One marketing expert says this creates a rare opportunity for retailers.

“You have highly motivated buyers coming into the marketplace on a strict time frame. It’s got sale written all over it,” Jeff Blohm, president of Blohm Creative Partners, an East Lansing-based marketing firm, said. “These opportunities are few and far between for retailers.”

Blohm added that retailers like Meijer, Wal-Mart, Target and Bed Bath and Beyond depend on back-to-school sales heavily and that August ranks up there with December in terms of business opportunities. He said the sudden influx of customers particularly in a college town is invaluable.

“Remember, places like Meijer are not just selling couches, they are building customers,” he said. “They work hard to make you a customer. Getting folks in there for four years is a big deal.”

Meijer officials agree that back-to-school shopping means big opportunity.

“Obviously, this is an important time of the year for retailers,” Meijer spokesman Frank Guglielmi said. “We have an advantage as a super center.”

Following Christmas and Easter in importance, Guglielmi said the back-to-school campaign starts shortly after July 4 and lasts through the first week of September. Changes over the past few years include a Price Drop program, which is a month-long agreement between suppliers and the store for “deep discounts on essential back-toschool items,” and cross promotions (think $10spent on cereal gets you $2 off a pack of underwear). Meijer expandedits electronics and furniture selections recently to target collegestudents, Guglielmi said.

“Weare geared toward volume,” he said, meaning that Meijer keeps itsprices “as low as possible” and does not carry “extravagant” furniturepieces. The Lake Lansing Road and Okemos stores offer hugeopportunities for reaching college students, he said.

With stuff comes trash

Sundaywas the first official move-in day for MSU freshmen and the sixneighborhoods on campus were overflowing with spacious cars, SUVs,trailers and plenty of sweating bodies (it hovered in the low 90s allday). Equally noticeable were the MSU employees working near trash andrecycling dumpsters in each of the neighborhoods.

Atthe end of the last school year, MSU waste services collected roughly11 tons of clothing and shoes, 43 tons of loft lumber, 36 tons ofcarpet, two tons of metal and eight tons of electronics, contributingto 626 cubic yards of all recyclable material. That material wasrecycled or donated to local charities, compared to the roughly 1,500cubic yards of trash that went to the landfill. A weight measurement inpounds from last year’s trash was not calculated.

Diane Barker, assistant director of Campus Living Services, oversees the recycling and trash collection initiative at MSU. When asked if she makes the connection between the amount of furnishings, electronics andstorage units at super centers and the amount of waste her departmentmanages at the end of the year, she said, “Most definitely. No questionabout it.”

Whilemove-out time in the spring is naturally a big collection period, shesaid that over the past few years, move-in time needed specialattention too.

“Students come with a lot of new things, especially freshmen,” she said. “With that is a fair amount of packaging.”

Strategies for collecting move-in materials have been in place for about six years and get stronger each year, she said.

Between Aug. 14 and Sept. 9 last year, theuniversity collected 1,785 cubic yards of corrugated cardboard andboxboard and nearly three tons of carpet tubes and polystyrene (whichincludes Styrofoam and plastic). The amount of corrugated cardboard andboxboard collected nearly tripled from fall 2008 to fall 2009,signaling a rise in recycling.

“Packaging is definitely a challenge,” Barker said.

Shehas been at MSU for nearly 36 years, which includes her undergraduatestudies. “I moved in with two suitcases,” she recalls. “Earthlypossessions people have is just much more immense than when I was astudent. It’s a challenge.”

The“Pack up, Pitch in, Help out.” initiative began in 1996 to decreasetrash and increase recycling on campus. The 2006- 2007 school year sawa huge drop in trash (cut in half from roughly 3,000 cubic yards to1,500 cubic yards), the same year MSU President Lou Anna K. Simonlaunched the Boldness by Design campaign, a campus-wide effort toheighten environmental awareness.

TheMSU Office of Campus Sustainability promotes and played a role indesigning these initiatives. Assistant director Jennifer Battle andproject coordinator Lauren Olson (the director position is vacant) runthe program from a small office in Olds Hall. Battle said students aretargeted at their Academic Orientation Program earlier in the summerabout MSU’s waste reduction commitment.

“Stuffusually comes with stuff,” Battle said about the need for a move-inrecycling program. The Office of Campus Sustainability also heavilypromotes energy-saving electronics and conservation. “We don’t want to stifle students, but make them more responsible.”

The Office of Campus Sustainability issues its own move-in checklist, which looksquite different from a super center’s. Twenty suggestions in fivecategories include rechargeable batteries, reusable water bottles, adrying rack for clothes and Energy Star appliances and electronics.These checklists get distributed at AOP and during move-in. Meijer’s“The College Checklist” is available at store entrances and lists 136items in 11 categories.

Asthe mother of a daughter just starting kindergarten, Battle is enteringthe back-to-school-shopping world again (she was an undergraduate atMSU from 1996 to 2000). “It’s easy to get wrapped up in startingsomething new,” she said. “I think to myself, ‘Do I really need this?’Am I asking that simple question?”

The ‘little guys’

Withsuper centers comes the inevitable battle between retailers who cansell more things for less and specialty retailers who focus on onemarket (for instance, beds or electronics).

“It’sthe age-old battle of one entity taking from another. Sometimes thelittle guys get squeezed out,” Blohm said. “It’s worth it to sellthings cheap now and it’s hard for the small stores to play that game.”

GeorgePavick owns Pleats Interior Design in Old Town, specializing incustom-made fabrics and furniture. He doesn’t bother with tapping intothe backto-school market or trying to sell custom items far belowsuggested retail prices.

“I can’t compete down there,” he said. “We try not to duplicate things.”

Whilepre-packaged and repetitive may not be Pavick’s forte, he understandsthe desire to buy new home furnishings at low prices.

“As long as consumers understand they get what they pay for,” he said.

Pavickhas been in the interior design business for 20 years and has been inOld Town for the past 14. He decorates homes throughout the UnitedStates, including some in California and Texas. As for the productsfound in super centers compared to Pleats: “The difference is night andday. A few bright colors, a few patterns,” he said referring to theirsupplies. “Their audience is much broader, so they have to be.”

Thoughmost back-to-school shoppers say they go to a major retailer for thelow prices, a closer look about town reveals hidden treasures at afraction of the cost: thrift stores. For some, the fractional cost ofbuying secondhand and the experience of finding hidden treasures farexceeds buying something new that someone else might already have.

TazKarim, a medical anthropology doctoral student at MSU, was perusing thebric-a-brac shelves at Volunteers of America Sunday night, doing herbi-weekly thrift store shopping. To Karim, “thrifting” is a combinationof miniscule prices and the adventure of finding unique items. Shebought file organizers at her last trip for 50 cents (which cost $6 atan office supply store, she said) and earlier this summer found atoaster and a coffee maker for about $5.

“Theprice difference is dramatic,” she said, adding that she buys most ofher clothes from thrift stores too. Karim believes thrift storeshopping isn’t as widespread among new college students because supercenters provide all the goods one “needs” in a single store. Togetherwith strong advertising, perhaps it is also comforting to have brand new things, too, she said.

“People like buying new things. Going back to school is a reason to buy that new stuff,” she said.

Unintended consequences

Not only hasthis rare opportunity been good for the retail business, it also givesthe perception that late August is the time to buy. For retailers, it’sworth it to sell things at a lower cost. For consumers on a budget,it’s worth it to stock up.

Blohm has concernsabout this trend because of the pressure it puts on some families andthe “culture of spending pervasive in everything.”

“It’s building a case for what kids need and should have (for school) but it’s not necessarily what they have to have,” he said. “We live in a throwaway society. There has been a fundamental shift in the perceived value of goods we buy.

“Now it’s about what is good enough rather than what is good. That’s a scary thought,” he said.

Blohmattended MSU from 1978 to 1982, living a portion of that time inHubbard Hall, and remembers bringing less to college than what he seestoday. What furnishings he did bring were probably old and from hisparents’ basement, he said.

Witha daughter who is a high school senior, there is a very realpossibility that he will be the dad with the U-Haul trailer on campusone year from now, he said.

Allof this furnishings talk reminds Blohm of the famous George Carlincomedy skit on “stuff.” In it, Carlin laments the overwhelming quantityof possessions we think we need, and that our homes are nothing but bigcontainers to hold all of it.

“It’snot so much that we have stuff, now we need things to put our stuff in,or something like that,” Blohm tries to remember Carlin’s line. “Itreminds me of that.”