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Can New Deal Save Co-Op?
Troubled retailer hopes 10-year
management pact can turn the tide
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Business New Haven
1/11/1999
By: BNH
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After months of rumors that it might be forced to shut its doors for good, the 114-year-old Yale Co-Op found a cause for holiday cheer.
The store, which in 1997 was forced from its longtime Broadway location to relocate in Chapel Square Mall and found itself on what appeared to be the losing end of a mortal battle with the Barnes & Noble store which replaced it, has found a savior. That savior is the Lexington, Ky.-based Wallace Bookstores Inc., which just before Christmas inked a ten-year management deal with the non-profit cooperative society.
Under terms of the agreement, financial details of which were not made public, Wallace will assume management of the Yale Co-Op this month, bringing its financial resources and merchandising expertise to a store which, following its relocation, has seemed to lack a sense of definition.
Although the Co-Op maintains a large book department, most Yale professors now list their textbooks at Barnes & Noble's Yale Bookstore in the old Co-Op space on Broadway.
And although the Co-Op has continued to offer Yale-licensed and other clothing, school supplies and sundries, it appeared to have a difficult time attracting enough members of the Yale community down Chapel Street to a mall which held few other retail attractions to students, faculty and staff.
The arrangement with Wallace will not change the Co-Op's corporate structure or independence. The Yale Co-Op Corp. is owned and governed by its Yale-affiliated members, who number some 20,000. Wallace Bookstores is a family-owned retailer which operates some 75 stores in 23 states.
The Co-Op last year entered into an agreement with the Illinois-based Follett Corp., a major college bookstore presence, to help manage its book department temporarily. Follett was one of the firms with which the Co-Op board discussed a management agreement to run the entire store, but in the end Wallace earned the nod.
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