Studystore closes its doors

Studystore will disappear from Tilburg University. The store is a part of a national chain of book stores, and most stores will close their doors in April. Some, like Tilburg University’s store, will stay open until October. The store will still exist online, and there will be four service points.

Store manager Koen Gijsbers says the closure is inevitable. “The sales volume has been declining for years, even though our store still manages to make some profit. That was not the case in other stores, the trend to buy your books online is not favorable for bookstores like ours.”

Hylco Wijnants, manager of all campus stores of Studystore, confirms that the online store is doing much better. “For a while we have noticed that students order online massively. More than 70 percent like to buy their books on the internet. We know this from a survey we conducted in five cities.” On top of that, Studystore is now among the top ten suppliers in The Netherlands. “And an actual store also costs money, of course,” Wijnants says. “Online is more profitable.”

Staff
In the Studystore book stores, 67 people are employed, 13 of which have a temporary contract. The company is still negotiating with the works council about the future of the employees. “We hope that we can move a lot of employees to the service points. Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee that there will not be compulsory redundancies,” Wijnants says.

The service points will be located in Wageningen, The Hague, at Erasmus University Rotterdam and at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science. At Tilburg University, it is not clear what will replace the Studystore.