Some teacher supply stores find themselves shutting down
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Marilyn Clark remembers when teachers looking for classroom supplies came to her store nearly every month, ordering bulletin board kits, wall art and welcome signs touting the next big season or event.
But market forces, industry changes and new realities for teachers have squeezed traditional classroom supply stores like a playground ball, forcing some to shut their doors. The Owensboro, Kentucky, store Clark managed, The Teacher's Aid, closed Sept. 16 after more than three decades of business. That followed the recent closing of the company's Evansville store located at 301 N. Congress Ave. Competitors in the Kentucky cities of Madisonville and Louisville also have closed recently.
"There are still butterflies and bees and kitty cats to decorate classrooms with, but the vendors have come out with what I would call gourmet designer series -- polka dots, chevrons, Houndstooth," said Clark, who managed The Teacher's Aid for 16 years. "A teacher will decorate her bulletin board and then she'll buy her student name tags with the same design; she'll put her welcome sign on her front door with the same design; she'll buy her student desk plates with the same design, and it just goes on."
Such themes have enormous appeal to teachers who not only find them aesthetically pleasing, but who no longer have much time or money for decorations, Clark said. Lesson planning, committee meetings and administrative paperwork consume too much of the modern educator's time and energy.
The real problem, of course, is that the new designs don't keep teachers coming back to the store.
"They choose a theme they enjoy looking at, and then they keep that up all year," Clark said. "They come at back-to-school time, but people can't shop us enough to keep us open the rest of the year."
'Teaching has changed'
Clark said the Evansville store also served educators and parents in such places as Jasper, Boonville, Mount Vernon, Newburgh and Henderson, Kentucky.
It's not that classroom supply stores can't see past the need for bulletin board kits with their pre-packaged, themed paper products. Along with the cut-outs and toys and games, Clark's store carried resource books, arts and crafts materials and other necessities of running a classroom such as drawing papers, dry erase markers and chart tablets.
But many teachers get no money from their schools for such things, accepting early in their careers that those costs will have to come out of their own pockets. Sometimes a PTA or a school board steps in to help, sometimes not. Some schools do pay for supplies. At Jefferson Elementary in Henderson, classroom teachers this year were allotted $150 each to be used with designated vendors.
"At every school it's different. It depends on your administrator. It depends on what they spend their money on," said Sherry Ocker, who just wrapped up an 18-year teaching career at Cedar Hall Elementary School and Highland Elementary School.
Ocker has seen it all, or most of it. At Highland, administrators once encouraged homey classroom decor -- beanbags, dim lighting, lamps, curtains. By the end of her career, Ocker was going to The Teacher's Aid in Evansville for bulletin board borders, pencils to give as prizes, reading workbooks and postcards she could send students to welcome them into her class.
But she was going there just once a year.
There were several reasons. Ocker, who said she only occasionally got money from schools for classroom supplies, found she could save a few bucks by going to Dollar General and Target for things like stickers and bookmarks. Classroom educators teach less through themes now and more to standards, she said. The seasonal stuff that kept teachers in the stores -- turkeys for Thanksgiving, Christmas trees -- look passe in 2016.
And then there's technology.
"Some of those books that I might have gone to The Teacher's Aid to get, now there's all kinds of things online where I could buy it as an eBook and print things off of my computer without actually physically having the book anymore," Ocker said. "Teaching has changed over the years."
A shift
Natalie Jones is saddened by the trend away from traditional classroom supply stores. Jones, a North Junior High School teacher and a veteran of 34 years in the business, spoke by telephone just before entering a Hobby Lobby store to buy supplies. She knows all about how the Internet -- and teachers' own creativity -- is choking stores like The Teacher's Aid.
"I can remember making all my things and coloring with markers and outlining everything, and wanting to keep those things nice to be able to use from year to year," she said. "Now, I'll be real honest with you -- most of my stuff that I create, I create online as a Word document or in a Publisher file, and I take it to Office Depot and have it printed."
Jones pointed to the rise of Teachers Pay Teachers, a popular website for educators that bills itself as "the first and largest open marketplace where teachers share, sell, and buy original educational resources." Pinterest, a content sharing service where members can put images, videos and objects on pinboards, also is contributing to what Jones called a shift.
"You know, teachers are creating materials and then they're selling them on this site," Jones said of Teachers Pay Teachers.
The shift away from traditional classroom supply stores can be seen in the "I Can" statements -- posted statements of daily learning objectives for each subject taught -- that many local teachers are expected to post in their classrooms.
"People want that to look uniform, and they want it to be neat and clean," Jones said. "With Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest, they can create their own thing and make it look just the way that they want to with using clip art or things that are on the Internet. I'm one of them. I love creating things on the computer and seeing what it looks like in that vibrant color and then hard laminated."
Clark knows it's hard to compete in an online world. Her Owensboro store did do Internet sales. It just wasn't enough -- not when teachers and parents can join Amazon Prime, get things shipped to them free of charge and ship them back if necessary, also free. Not when customers can go straight to vendors' websites, effectively cutting out The Teacher's Aid.
But while it may be a new day in classroom supply sales, Clark said that doesn't mean the stores can't survive.
"If you're going to be successful in this industry, you're going to have to have a niche for the rest of the year besides just being the store where everybody wants to come before school starts," she said.
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Source: Evansville Courier and Press, http://bit.ly/2cKjTLN
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Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, http://www.courierpress.com