Thanks to all who responded about hosting the Scholastic Warehouse =
Sale.
Here is what everyone had to say.
We have a school in Lawton who has done it now for I think 3 years. I
think she (the librarian) has been very pleased with it. I want to say
they make around $3000. It's usually held around the first part of May
and everything is 50% off. Since she doesn't get a cash profit (books
only) and since she has already had 1 or 2 fairs during the year for
cash and book profit and has gotten all the hardbacks Scholastic offers
for the library itself, she chooses to divide the book profit up among
her teachers and they all get like $100 in free books. She uses the
gym/auditorium area since it is much larger than her normal classroom
size library can hold. She has lots of parent volunteers. She has had
good newspaper/radio/TV coverage of the event. I think it runs for like
3 days - Thurs.-Sat. with Thurs. and Fri. being evening times like 4-7
and Sat. being something like 9-3.
I did one last spring. I must say that Scholastic provided employees =
who
helped with some of the more complicated financial tax forms for
teachers, and did the set up, etc. I have mixed feelings about it. It
was a tremendous amount of work in a short time, I didn't get cash,
though I did get a certain amount of paperbacks to keep (use for AR
prizes), and I did earn points to spend on Scholastic merchandise in
their catalog. Be sure you get lots of teachers to help, advertise it
heavily with the surrounding schools and be prepared with lots of
change.
I don't know about hosting a "warehouse sale", but I've been to a sale
just recently at the Scholastic warehouse in Burlington, VT & I've
hosted 14 years of annual Scholastic Book Fairs in my school library. =
If
it is truly a "warehouse" sale that they are offering you, then the
prices on the books will be incredibly slashed...like brand new (80%
paperbacks) & (20%) hardcovers, averaging around $1.00 a title (pbs) &
$3.00 (hcs). Teachers will love it! When I went to their I got over 100
titles for about $125, & they let me use a PO, then invoiced my school.
I retired from our district at the middle school level in 2001 and had
our
first warehouse sale that year. Actually I told the rep I would help =
but
as
I was within weeks of retirement and was racing to leave everything in
perfect order for my replacement I would not run the bookfair. Last =
year
I
volunteered one day at my old school to help with the warehouse sale.
This
year in April the third warehouse sale will be held at my old school =
and
I
will be subbing in the classroom of the English dept chair so she may
run
the book fair. So I am fairly experienced. On the whole I would say =
that
the experience was positive. The first year was not as smooth as the
Eng.
dept chair who ran it was not experienced and neither were some of the
volunteers, including the other Eng. teachers. By now they are experts.
Do
not expect to make any money! They will only give profit in points to =
be
used in the catalog (not the reg. catalog either) and in books. My
school
was able to amass huge amounts of books for the library and for various
departments however. The fair is huge, many books are offered and they
are
new titles, many not even offered in the bookfairs held that year (ours
was
in Dec.). They all come in rolling shelves and some boxes that need
table
display. Ours filled the small gym (not our main gym), which the PE
dept.
was kind enough to give up for two days (our fair was all day Friday,
Friday
evening, Sat. and all day Monday). Bad news if it rains!
Hints:
Have plenty of volunteers. Scholastic will provide cash registers which
come with instructions and machines for charge cards.
You will need extension cords and we taped ours to the floor.
Do lots of PR. Most sales are not to students (the last thing they are
thinking about is books in April). Send flyers to neighboring =
districts,
give info to the local papers, put it on the school website, notify all
the
schools in your district, etc. We made thousands in sales to teachers
from
neighboring districts, some even brought checks from their district.
Scholastic provides bags. You will need these.
Have lots of change and a method of counting and locking up money as =
the
day
progresses. Also, you will have to send Scholastic a check, so you will
need
a way to deposit the money and have a check sent. If your PTO will do
this
it is much faster than having the district do it.
Our dept. chairs set aside stacks of books they were interested in as
the
fair progressed as did the library. You will need empty boxes for this
and
a place to set them aside.
Have a table and the labels (bookplates) provided by Scholastic where
parents may buy books and donate them to the library. Have good signage
and
explanations in this areas so that you will get donations. We
certainly did.
I've done this before and had a great response from the kids. What the
rep.
didn't tell me is you don't get a book profit like you do on a regular
fair. I think I made about a $100 for selling $5000 of their books. In
another words my school district paid me that week to sell Scholastic
books. If that's OK with you, go for it.
We had a warehouse sale in December, and we had very poor attendance=20
because of bad weather. Another teacher and I collaborated with her=20
Interact group (a Rotary-sponsored service group) to sponsor the=20
sale. We worked Friday night and Saturday morning and were guaranteed=20
$1,000 by the company. We set it up in one of our smaller gyms,=20
because you get a lot of cases of books. We only made about $1,000,=20
but the company still paid us $1,000. It was well worth the effort.
I heard a school in our area had one and in the end, were able to keep
all the books that didn't sell for FREE!!
I have had two warehouse sales, and while they are work, they are a
blast!
I have them in my media center. We do it for two afternoons/evenings. I
invite everyone from the surrounding counties. Everyone comes. All my
teachers love it, because they do not want to go to the warehouse --
it's
20 miles away. Also, I get $250 in books, which translates into $500. =
We
need books. This fair saves lots of people money, so it's a win-win for
everyone.
Our school hosted one last spring. It was overwhelming. It took up
the entire gym and we sold almost 3 times as much as we do at our =
normal
book fair and at 50% off. The community loved it, groups like PTA and
Title 1 got some great buys. The sales staff from Scholastic set up,
helped staff and took care of all the money. Our chairperson did an
amazing job promoting it.=20
I did not personally have a sale but another media specialist in our
district did. She raved about it at our monthly meeting. She
advertised the sale to other school districts and all of the schools
within our district. She said that she was able to acquire quite a few
books for her library -- hard cover books!
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