Campus Store, Arcata, lost $250,000 in one year

by Brad Butterfield

The Campus Store, Arcata boasts high ceilings, a prime location and 10,200 square feet of usable office and retail space for Cal Poly Humboldt to sell merchandise, build community relations and provide information on California’s new polytechnic. This lot, located at 697 8th St. on the Arcata Plaza, is owned by the Trustees of the California State University and is leased to the Humboldt State University Foundation at $12,240 a month, according to the lease agreement signed June 17, 2021. The expensive investment into the downtown Arcata real estate is both a success and failure, depending on who answers the question.

Expense reports obtained through public records requests show that from July 2022 – Nov. 2023, the off-campus Campus Store, Arcata had expenses totaling $514,228 with only $258,034 in revenue. The last 15 months of operation have lost Cal Poly Humboldt a whopping $256,194.

According to Cal Poly Humboldt Communications Specialist Grant Scott-Goforth, the main goals for the Campus Store, Arcata did not include profitability. Instead, according to the university, the new storefront’s main goals are to expand the university’s relationship with the community of Arcata, provide visibility to the community, engage with store guests and provide information about the university, as well as expand Cal Poly Humboldt logo wear offerings.

“The University sees the stores as successes on those terms,” said Goforth in an email. 

Karen Diemer, Arcata city manager, highlighted the crucial timing of the store’s opening.

 “It was kind of mid-pandemic and we had been working closely with downtown businesses trying to pivot to outdoor sales areas, outdoor dining, trying to do whatever we could do to assist businesses and keep [us] afloat during COVID,” Diemer said. “I remember just having a really thankful feeling of having the university invest in what would be a retail space right on the plaza as we feared, at the time, that businesses could be closing as a result of the pandemic.”

It’s important to recognize that prior to the opening of the off-campus Campus Store, Arcata, branded gear, school supplies and books were all sold out of the on-campus Textbook Warehouse (more commonly referred to as the Bookstore), located in the Student Activities Center on the third floor. This on-campus location was difficult for alumni and community members to access, in part, because of Cal Poly Humboldt’s insufficient parking.

“The campus location was difficult for people to access because of parking and its location on campus,” Goforth said in an email.

An unnamed, long-term employee of the Campus Store, Arcata detailed how the parking situation at the off-campus Campus Store is not much of an improvement from on-campus parking. They chose to stay under the pseudonym Doe to avoid persecution from their job.

“Even now, our parking lot still has parking permits [required],” Doe said. “Our whole parking lot; you need a parking permit or like 20 minute parking, so people get really annoyed about that.” 

The university embarked on a massive undertaking upon buying the building, previously a bank, into a welcoming storefront that both represented Cal Poly Humboldt as well as fitting into the surrounding businesses.

“The feedback that I received from the community has all been very positive about the bookstore,” Diemer said. “The feedback that I’ve received from retailers about having that kind of a core hub right on the plaza is positive from downtown businesses.”

The city-center location of the Campus Store, Arcata lends itself to much higher foot traffic. But foot traffic alone does not necessarily translate into improved community outreach nor sales, Doe pointed out.

“We should be more busy with the whole farmers market going on. Usually we’re not because a lot of people just go there specifically for the farmers market,” said Doe. “They’re not really wanting to shop around the plaza that much and other than that, weekends are pretty slow.”

The new store’s location off-campus removes it from the epicenter of campus events, like graduation. This means there is an extra step for would-be customers in order to buy their Cal Poly branded gear.

“We’re getting less foot traffic, from what I’ve been told, than previous graduations and things like that because when you have your main store for apparel and stuff—when parents are coming to buy apparel and things like that—off-campus and you’re holding the graduation on-campus, there’s a disconnect between that,” Justin Plourde said, an environmental science and management major who has worked at both Campus Store, Arcata and the on-campus Bookstore for over two years. “And yes, some people will come to the [off-campus] store specifically to come buy stuff. But before, [during] graduation, people tended to wander in [to the on-campus Bookstore] and buy stuff rather than go out of their way to go to the [off-campus] store.”

Still, the Plaza location has more consistent foot traffic throughout the year, most notably through the summer months, Plourde said.

The significant deficit of the off-campus Campus Store, Arcata may be, in part, due to inventory problems, both in price and availability. 

“Their biggest income is from clothes, which is why they’re so expensive. And they’re all from like, these specific brands like MV, Champion and Nike, stuff like that. Literally, there’s a pair of leggings at our job that is $120. I’m like, no college student is going to pay $120. I would never buy that and I get a 20% discount,” Doe said. 

The leggings Doe mentioned are not an outlier. A university branded notebook costs $44, a small, stuffed Cal Poly Humboldt branded bear runs $20, women’s shorts go for $78, bras for $78, and a plain white t-shirt with a green ‘H.’ will set customers back $76.

Plourde explained that shipments coming to the Campus Store, Arcata can take months between the time they are ordered and when they finally hit the shelf. Currently, this has caused a lack of sizing and style options at a crucial time in the Campus Store’s sales year.

“We usually have big shipments of clothing before graduation and between the new semesters, and we have yet to get anything that I have seen,” Plourde said.

Plourde added that he has not been in the store this week and a massive shipment may have just come in time for the spring rush. Some inventory currently on-site has evidently sat for some time, as many mugs and cups were caked in a visible layer of dust observed on Jan. 16. 

With the transfer of apparel and branded trinkets to the Campus Store, Arcata, the Bookstore on-campus has become a shell of its former self.

“Everyone’s like, ‘what happened, it looks like you guys got cleared out,’ and we’re like… ‘yeah,’” said Doe.

More concerning from an operational standpoint is the confusion the new store has generated for students buying textbooks. Plourde explained that the Campus Store, Arcata does not make textbook orders nor process returns. They do, however, shuttle books back and forth to the on-campus Bookstore which is responsible for all textbook processing. To confuse matters more, a clerical error in the listed phone numbers for the businesses has led to many customers calling the wrong store.

“When people look up the on-campus Bookstore number, it gives them our number. So then, whenever I pick up the phone I have to tell the people like, ‘Sorry, I apologize. This isn’t the right store. I can give you the other store’s number.’ I [memorized it] now because of how often it happens,” Plourde said.

The fact that the off-campus store is named the Campus Store, Arcata has complicated the situation further.

“The name ‘Campus Store’ is so hard for new people to wrap their heads around because it’s like, oh, the Campus Store is the one on-campus… but it’s not. So, then everyone goes to the wrong store to pick up their package,” Doe said.

This has led to a frequent shuttling of sold goods to and from the on-campus Bookstore and off-campus Campus Store, Arcata.

“It’s like so extra and it is so confusing, because then people always think there’s items at one store and then [there aren’t]. It’s ridiculous,” Doe said.

Plourde detailed the constant state of limbo that the Campus Store, Arcata has been in since its opening.

“I think the school doesn’t know what they want from us. It sounds like they think they wanted everything off-campus. And then they realized that that probably wasn’t the best move, but they still want everything on-campus because they want to utilize that space,” said Plourde. “It’s very confusing. And like I said, I don’t think the school knows what they want to do.”

According to Scott-Goforth, speaking on behalf of the University, Cal Poly Humboldt has no plans to close the on-campus Bookstore.

With so much money poured into the new location, the university is attempting creative (and tasty) ways to attract potential customers to the off-campus Campus Store, Arcata. 

“I know that we’re also trying to get food trucks and stuff to come by on certain days so that more people would want to come in the parking lot and things like that,” Doe said.

Doe’s claim was confirmed by a marketing email sent out by the university on Jan. 15 that read, “Pineapple Express Food Truck, Spreading aloha 1 plate lunch at a time! Brought to you by Housing & Res Life. Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Campus Bookstore, Arcata!”

Interestingly, the university advertised the Campus Store, Arcata as the “Campus Bookstore” in the email.

With nearly half a billion dollars pumped into California’s newest Cal Poly, it may be true that the university is not concerned with a $256,194 deficit at the Campus Store, Arcata. However, as last semester saw budget cuts to many programs that benefit students, like the swimming pool, students are frustrated with the misallocation of resources.

“I feel like that money should not be going to a new building. It wouldn’t make much of a difference if I was working on-campus or off-campus. I would appreciate them fixing things like that for the betterment of the students, not really what makes them the most money,” Plourde said before adding, “[There are] many other things that they should be working on, and I don’t see [why] this is something that they should be proud of.”