What the Campus Store re-brand means for students

The consolidation of course materials into one sales location has caused long line-ups. Here students wait to check out after shopping at the Campus Store.

Eliza Pope/Assistant Photo Editor

Titles Bookstore is no more and the Tank is closed. The new incarnation is called the Campus Store, and it is being billed as the “one-stop shop for everything McMaster”. The new store is simultaneously consolidating and expanding.

Renovations this summer allowed for the expansion of the Campus Store to include an attached textbook selling location. In the process, the Tank was emptied and all course materials were moved to the main location.

While the changes are meant to improve both the variety in products and the efficiency of the operations, the new design is not without its drawbacks.

Students seeking textbooks must enter the store through a separate, tented entrance outside of Chester New Hall. Shoppers are not allowed to cross from the main store into the course materials store, but are permitted to go straight into the Campus Store after purchasing textbooks.

The lineup into the new textbook store has been long during the first week of classes, at times stretching from the tent outside of CNH to the University Hall arch. In past years, first year students bought their textbooks at Titles, while course materials for upper courses were sold at The Tank. Long lines are a mainstay for McMaster textbook seekers, but the new system creates a line that includes all students.

The Campus Store has now, more than Titles before it, increased its focus on McMaster-branded consumer goods and clothing.

Donna Shapiro, Director of the Campus Store said, “I think that the name, the Campus Store, can now appeal to more potential customers than Titles could”.

Shapiro says that the university marketplace has changed a lot in the past few years. Because of the introduction of eBooks and increased competition in book sales, Campus Store needed to alter its product offerings to meet the market demands of the McMaster community.

Less than six per cent of overall sales currently come from general books.

Clothes now occupy four separate sections of the store and will evidently be a sales focus for the store this year. The consolidated store offers an expanded selection of McMaster clothing and other merchandise.

“More students are purchasing McMaster crested merchandise than in the past. The profile of McMaster as well as the Marauders’ ongoing success has created an increased demand for the products being offered,” explained Shapiro.

In addition to McMaster wear, the store has expanded and updated its electronics section.

While expansion was a major focus of the store’s renovation, the Campus Store no longer has a post office. The continuing decline of the use of “snail-mail’, along with the changes in the OSAP process meant that a full-service postal operation became inefficient and obsolete.

Shapiro said that the post office lost money each year, citing an operation cost of over $90, 000 last year.