By purchasing UCLA-emblazoned sweatshirts to wear to football
games, students are not simply supporting their team, but their
student union as well.
While student unions at most schools are typically funded by
student union fees, at UCLA, the revenue generated by different
Associated Students of UCLA businesses take care of the cost to
fund many student programs and services.
Though this business economic model helps keep student union
fees low, the model is risky and relies on non-student customers
for financial success.
Students remain the largest group of consumers, but they
actually constitute less than half of the customers in the B-level
of Ackerman Student Union, according to a survey conducted by the
Associated Students of UCLA last year.
While 37.5 percent of the consumers are UCLA students,
non-students, which make up the remaining 62.5 percent, consist of
other groups, including faculty, staff, alumni and visitors.
“(The results) validated that students are a large percent
of customers, it validates what we suspected,” said ASUCLA
retail store director Keith Schoen. “There isn’t even a
category that comes close.”
During the 2001-2002 academic school year, ASUCLA conducted a
survey on the B-level floor of Ackerman Student Union to see who
were its customers.
“Our board of directors wanted to know … it’s easy
to assume most customers are students,” Schoen said.
But the textbook store on the A-level was not surveyed for the
obvious reason that students would have made up its entirety,
Schoen said.
Many people come from different parts of the world to shop in
other parts of the store, though.
According to assistant provost of the College of Letters &
Science John Sandbrook, during the 1980s and early 1990s, the
student store was a regular stop for Japanese tour groups. Levels
of Japanese tourism became significant factors in BearWear
sales.
“There would be days where a half dozen tour buses would
be visiting the student store,” Sandbrook said.
Tourism was so successful that ASUCLA repaid a $2 million
commerce loan from tourism profits to landscape the asphalt walkway
from Moore Hall to Dykstra Hall in 1983-1984, Sandbrook said.
Since then, sales from Japanese tourism have dropped because of
Japan’s faltering economy, Sandbrook said.
Though visitors to UCLA made-up approximately 11 percent of the
B-level’s total amount of customers last school year, Schoen
pointed out that not all visitors to the campus are tourists
““ the “visitor” could be from anywhere in
L.A.
According to Schoen, tourism doesn’t play a major role in
the store’s overall sales.
“Even with tourism sales down, from previous years,
that’s not a major impact on UCLA stores.”
The maximum number of visitors is 11 percent, so the actual
amount of tourists is less than that.
“We’re better insulated in these events than outside
retails,” Schoen continued.
But any amount of lost revenue could prove to be a substantial
amount for the Association.
According to Schoen, sales in the computer store were off by
$1.5 million last year and continue to decline.