This summer, the RAM Gift Shop located in the basement of the Memorial Union was replaced by an expanding RAM Tech store.
The space usually full of University of Rhode Island merchandise is now home to RAM Care and other services that RAM Tech provides.
“We didn’t really close it,” Paul Whitney, Director of URI Campus Store and Licensing, said in regards to the disappearance of the Ram Gift Shop.
By itself, the gift store was not profitable. In fact, it was not even used as a means to create profit, but more as a last resort place to sell the close out product. RAM Tech, in contrast, was growing immensely and is estimated to be around 25 percent of total sales for the bookstore, according to Whitney.
This change has been very beneficial so far, according to Whitney, especially for the growing RAM Tech satellite store. This fall they were able to have two different rooms that could separate the students based on what they needed in RAM Tech. The products available for sale were on one side, while computer problems were taken care of on the other. As compared to past years, Whitney said that “it worked much better this fall.”
Whitney explained that “the gift shop… is really a close-out store” and was only necessary to provide a merchandise store open during the weekend. In previous years, the URI Bookstore was closed during the weekend except for special events. The gift shop was introduced to “provide that satellite store mainly for Saturdays, to be open for the weekend,” Whitney said.
The products that were in the Gift Shop were also being sold in the main bookstore.
“It was more of a holding location for items that were selling slowly [and] that were odd sizes,” Whitney said.
In the gift shop, the University was able to display products and provide a space for products that were not selling well and that the store was not planning on maintaining, otherwise known as “close-out products.” By having this separate location, the main store (the bookstore) was able to free up space to add new products and merchandise.
According to Whitney, the main reason for the RAM Gift Shop was “to display the product [and] be open on Saturdays.” Unfortunately, that model was not working for the store.
“[It’s] not really a full gift shop,” Whitney said. “We found admissions’ tours or visitors that came to the building… were always asking for things we did not have. So we went ahead and expanded and went back to having just the main store [open] on Saturdays.”
Whitney said that RAM Tech, the Gift Shop, Campus Copy and the convenience store are all satellite operations or departments of the main campus store. They pay rent to the Union for all of these different spaces, so switching from one department store to another was fairly easy in that regard.
The bookstore is also working towards decreasing the amount of close out product that they have. “If we’re doing a better job with buying and re-orders, then we’re always going to have some sale racks, but we’re feeding it throughout the year,” Whitney said.
“I can see why it can generate this question for sure,” Whitney said, “some people had seen it as a gift shop and we switched it this summer.”
Whitney wants to make sure everyone realizes that nothing was taken away over the summer.
“We just expanded store hours back to Saturday [for the main bookstore] and displayed the product differently,” he said. This past summer they were also able to change out some fixturing and expand the clothing section.
In the future, Whitney hopes that they will be able to do a fuller remodel of the campus store so that they can better present their products and increase their gift and novelty sales.