After ending the 2013/2014 fiscal year with almost half a million dollars in losses, the SFU Bookstore is looking to new avenues to expand their services while meeting student demand in the technology age.
“We had to eat this burden this year,” said Mikhail Dzuba, manager of the SFU Bookstore. “Here we have a significant year of loss, but at least there is money to absorb that. It’s not like we’re having to make it up next year. Our past year of being successful has allowed us to absorb this as a bump in the road.”
At the end of March, bookstore management discovered that their losses from the year totalled $481,000. This loss resulted from a 10 per cent annual decrease in sales as well as a higher cost of goods as a result of lower prices.
Adding to the financial burden was a year-end shift to a new system of inventory valuation, which will allow management to monitor the financial situation of the bookstore throughout the year rather than discover the inventory’s value at the end of March.
Switching to this new method cost them approximately $171,000, but Dzuba and executive director of ancillary services Mark McLaughlin felt it was worth it. “We made it even worse for ourselves in order to get out of the challenge of never really knowing true information except for once a year,” said Dzuba.
The SFU Bookstore’s situation is not unique in North America, as students turn to more creative solutions such as Amazon, eBooks, and online source textbooks to obtain their course materials. “We’ve gone through the last five years of declining course material and we’re at that apex now where we need to make a change,” said Dzuba. “The crisis is kind of on.”
“We want to embrace the digital world because that’s where we see it going,” explained McLaughlin. “Our mission for the next few years is really to lower the cost of learning materials for students.”
This crisis is manifested in the fact that almost 35 per cent of SFU students surveyed by the bookstore last year said that they do not purchase textbooks at all. Instead, they rely on finding access online or through other means. “Our worry is that [. . .] students aren’t accessing it altogether,” said McLaughlin. “We’ve got to find a way to get learning content to students.”
The bookstore has already attempted to challenge alternative suppliers by reducing prices of used books by 15 per cent, among other things. Dzuba explained, “We did a lot of price matching last year, we did a lot of trying to bring prices down to be equal to what Amazon was, and that cost us business in margins.”
One area in which both Dzuba and McLaughlin see avenues for improvement is custom courseware and textbooks. Said McLaughlin, “We’re looking at much more of that kind of development that allows us to take advantage of some of the most affordable options and blend them together.”
Custom courseware is attractive because it would allow SFU to include discounted — or even free — publications, reducing costs for students. “We see no reason why students should be buying 100 per cent of a book when their professors are only using 50 per cent of the chapters,” said McLaughlin. This option is also desirable from a sustainability standpoint, as course material could be bound on campus instead of shipped from the States.
However, one main challenge of switching to a more customized or online system of material distribution is getting faculty on board. “Faculty wants what is simple,” said Dzuba.
The two are looking to encourage faculty to reuse textbooks or offer the same course material for a number of semesters. “What we’re hoping is that it closes the loop [so] there’s more students who are able to sell their books at buy-back,” explained Dzuba.
Despite the many challenges ahead, both Dzuba and McLaughlin are confident that they will be at the forefront of Canadian universities exploring greater options for course material distribution. Said McLaughlin, “There’s a lot of avenues, a lot of issues, and a lot of solutions.”
