Going back to school - School Days educational products stores - Making It - Company Profile

Nation's Business, Nov, 1996 by Lana J. Chandler

When John K. Burdette II went to work for a school-supplies store during his senior year in high school, his goals were to make some money and spend less time attending classes. Today, Burdette, 22, heads a South Charleston, W.Va., company called School Days and is his former employer's main competitor.

"I knew there was always going to be a market for educational products, whether it's government money or from parents, day-cares, or churches," says Burdette. "But I needed a competitive edge to get people's attention and keep them coming back."

Remembering some customers' complaints about congested aisles, inconvenient hours, long delays on special orders, and lack of parking, Burdette concluded that customer convenience and service would be fundamental to competing successfully with the company where he had worked.

Entrepreneurship isn't a new role for Burdette. At 14, when his family lived in Spartanburg, S.C., he opened a baseball-card store in a local shopping center. For two years, he operated it after school and on weekends. When his family moved to West Virginia, he sold the business for $15,000.

Profits from the sale helped finance the initial legwork for School Days. Burdette was attending West Virginia University in Morgantown when he started seriously researching the school-supplies business. His greatest challenge was getting adequate financing.

"We always have difficulty going to the bank," Burdette says. "I don't own a house to secure the loans. The business is so new that unless you have some sort of hard asset to back a loan, it's just not easy getting financing for at least the first three or four years."

His parents' cash investment of $30,000 in exchange for stock in the company helped get Burdette a $75,000 West Virginia Capital Access Loan under a program designed to help small businesses. School Days was launched in August 1994. "It took $105,000 just to get the doors open," he says.

Before long, the business needed to borrow an additional $75,000. Burdette finally obtained a loan guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, although his company almost went under, he says, because of delays in processing his application.

'We were starving for cash," he says. "The business was new, and supplier credit wasn't there. We lost a lot of sales because we had to keep such a lean inventory." Burdette has since sold additional stock to "a handful of other investors" but has retained the largest block of shares.

Today the company has three full-time employees and eight part/timers. Occupying 3,750 square feet, the store caters to retail customers but sells at wholesale to school districts, offering a full range of educational products, including workbooks, games, tapes, CD-ROMs, puzzles, books, electronic learning aids, and art supplies. Burdette won't release sales figures, but he says the company is growing over 50 percent faster than last year. Recently, he opened a second store, in Beckley, W.Va.

The company purchased a van in late 1995 for making deliveries and calling on accounts. Before the Beckley store opened, Burdette used the van on weekends to transport supplies to a temporary location in the plaza now housing the store. Plans now include testing other markets by setting up temporary locations.

Burdette attributes his success to "putting customers' needs" first. Both stores are in heavily trafficked strip malls. Rent isn't cheap, but Burdette maintains that it's worth the expense. Customers have plenty of free parking. The stores stay open until 8 every evening except Sunday to meet the needs of teachers and working parents.

Burdette uses shelving that is primarily designed for music stores. Not as high as standard retail shelving, it gives the store an open and airy feeling, and the deep bins make it easy for people to flip through books. The aisles are wide enough to let customers-typically children-sit on the floor while perusing materials. School Days also offers customers a free 400-page catalog listing several thousand products that can be specially ordered if they are not available m the store.

Burdette insists it's important to keep in touch with customers and know their needs. "We have mailing-list forms that ask our customers if they're parents, teachers, students; what grade level . . . those types of things," he says. This way, we can get a good handle on who our customers reaDy are." In return for filling out a form, School Days' customers receive a discount coupon for their next purchase.

One thing Burdette is sure of: "The better we know our customers, the better we can serve them."