#StationeryRant - Something that affects families with children going to school

The title might be unassuming and kind of strange - but I'm literally tearing my head off at how stationery has turned into an evil nightmare of an industry (if I can call it that...)


Not sure about what people did before I went to primary, but back then - stationery existed only in stores, in loose items, you got a list of what to get and buy before or just after you started school. People did what they needed to do - everyone was pretty happy with that.

Sure that might have been yet another hassle, but it gave us one thing that now showed up recently - freedom! Freedom to choose where we bought it from, for whatever price we wanted. Schools would have been perfectly fine with a 1B5 with Pams written all over it, or some colouring pencil set of another brand which coloured what needed to be coloured in.


Starting from a few years back, things started to change. While I still had a list of what was required, my school also gave us an option to tick off a box and have a pack arrive at our class all ready to go by the next week. Sure, it's convenient, but we calculated that the package cost a fair bit more than going out and buying the contents ourselves.

It also happens to be that we live right opposite a shopping complex with a bookstore, so we didn't need to worry about whether fuel miles goes into the cost of the package, but either way, it was more expensive.




Things were simple during primary and intermediate - all you needed were few exercise books, pad, stuff you need in a pencil case (pens, pencils, erasers, etc) and a few "tools" like calculators and compasses.

Obviously, things get a little more complex when you get to high school.


In my first year, we still got a list - which was good. But this time round - there were some weird workbooks on there which didn't exist at bookstores... prices for these "workbooks" ranged from $8 to $20.

Turns out they were just photocopied pages from other workbooks stapled together for subjects as a workbook.

WHAT?!?

I'm fine with the school photocopying pages for us to work on, but in extremely expensive workbooks?

What's worse - most people never finished the entire contents of it - since no class would ever use an entire workbook (which people would know also happens with practically any other workbook)


So the school's already cleaning up with these so called "workbooks" which are expensive, an un-necessary waste of paper, made through another company, and ridiculously riddled with frequently-misaligned photocopied pages. Remember that there are also those pesky, and ever-increasing things called "school donations" on the side which by the way needs paying so you could make use of school resources...





The next year, we get told that the school's not supplying a list. We just got told to go to a website.

It was a new "initative" by OfficeMax - under their wholesale wing, School Supplies (who also do their own exercise books etc)

Basically, you selected checkboxes for subjects you are about to take, these pull a bunch of stuff down from a list which the school pre-sets. Back then, "packages" didn't exist on the site (I'll go over that soon) - so you can see what you needed to buy (plus those nasty proprietary books) and you are still able to have that information on hand to go to another store to buy stationery from.

There is also one more thing - the site only gives a small 70px by 70px picture, a short description, stock code (obviously for their own database) and price. That's it - you can't see the cover of the item, nor can you possibly work out what a "Big Book" is if the picture just has a really big blue covered book with tiny words in it.


A good thing about this service is that you got what you definitely needed (and then some) and it's all ready to go before you start school (so schools don't have the 1 week lingering time) - but it just made things for frugal and smart shoppers that more complicated.




The site pretty much has looked and functioned the same way now as it did then - apart from a few little things like multi-student orders (for big families), a clearer generated list of stationery for each subject (previously you needed to manually figure out what would go where as it just came in a big pile)...


Now it even takes in fees on behalf of schools and has new "packages" available too.

Here's a "compulsory" fee that the school wants us to pay:
(The site says that matters regarding fees is not their responsibility as they only transfer the money to the school's bank account)



Our payment of $27 is for a "Success Planner Chart and Pen"?!?! Our school's gone mad!! They're hiding fees everywhere!


Making matters even worse - the site/school now hide stuff in the aforementioned "Compulsory Pack A" for Year 9's (this is an order for my sister, not for me by the way).

We don't even get a peek into this compulsory pack - until we hit the Buy button and got a huge invoice with everything listed! Stuff like rulers, pencils, erasers, compasses, protractors - are all included. Stuff we don't need since we have them!


School Supplies says the site allows you to "add or remove items they [students] may already have" - obviously the introduction of these "packages" goes against this!




I've seen other schools go down a similar path, but in a different way. You can now buy bags of stationery in "packs" - basically, walk into a participating local book store, grab a pack, and go. I have nothing against them since they clearly list the entire contents of the pack, so you can still get other stuff separately (unless it comes with one of those "special" books I talked about).

However, it's only till recently that I found out that these packs came from China. Exercise books are Warwick branded, made by Croxley in New Zealand, with some other NZ stationery and obviously some that aren't, but they're packed in China!

What a great thing to do... ship NZ stuff to China to be packed, probably by some poor labourer paid squillions times less than the minimum wage, only to be shipped back to NZ.

I know outsourcing is the hot thing to do if you're a business - moving stuff offshore to a country which can accomplish the task (which simply is grabbing a bunch of stationery and stuffing it in a plastic bag) for a significantly lesser cost. But seriously - this isn't really helping anyone, apart from the middleman.

(So if you're one of those people against carbon miles or cheap labour - watch out!)




Sidetracking a bit - I don't get why 14B8 exists anymore. It's a 50 Leaf version of the 200 Leaf Maxi Pad (just 7mm lined A4 refill pad) - it's far better value to get the Maxi Pad @ $1.36 compared to 14B8 @ ~$0.70 - I use around 600 leaves of refill in a year!




All in all - one thing is evident. Stationery by itself hasn't changed, but the delivery system has. While evolving to encourage consumers to purchase in a one-stop-shop environment, manipulated by companies and schools.

Schools are probably encouraged by these services probably from loyalty programmes or something - the site has points which are accumlated by our school for every $25 you buy.

Consumers are just standing there, and following the lure of a simple click-/grab-and-buy world.


That was my rant. If you wanted to see the tweets which lead to this blog post, check out the #StationeryRant hash tag.


Other related posts:
Whoo – my very own domain!
Yet another random text...
2degrees - I like your products but...