Off-Campus Markets : SDSU, UCSD Boosters Won’t Have to Trudge Far for Memorabilia

Move over, J.C. Penney. Look out, Disney Store. The Aztecs are on the move in Mission Valley, and we’re not talking about San Diego State’s football team.

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This time, the university’s student store is trying to score points on the retail scoreboard.

Aztec Shops, the book- and clothes-selling arm at SDSU, opened its first off-campus shop Thursday in the Fashion Valley shopping center.

The clothing boutique is the first salvo by San Diego-area universities looking for a new niche apart from their traditional student markets.

Next month, the bookstore at UC San Diego will open a combination book and T-shirt shop on the ground floor of the One American Plaza skyscraper across from the Santa Fe Depot. The store will serve students in the new downtown UCSD Extension Center, but managers hope also to attract tourists and workers with an extensive general book selection and adult-style shirts with UCSD and other UC logos.

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“We’re all looking for ways to get more of our merchandise out into the community,” said Harvey Goodfriend, manager of Aztec Shops, a nonprofit SDSU auxiliary corporation. “In our case, we’re mainly trying to improve access to our products among the many San Diego State alumni and (athletic) boosters who don’t want to fight the traffic and parking problems to get to our campus.”

The retailing idea is relatively new among state universities. The Aztec Shop is the first California State University store to set up shop off-campus.

Among UC operations, UC Irvine has had the UCI Store in a shopping center near the Orange County campus for about two years selling specialized textbooks and clothing. UCLA is considering locations in Westwood Village adjacent to the university as well as a store in Universal City.

“We’re starting on a trial basis and we’ll evaluate it at the end of the year,” Goodfriend said. “Of course, I expect to say ‘What a brilliant idea!’ come January. I estimate conservatively that there are a couple of hundred thousand people in the community who have some relationship to San Diego State. We hope they’ll find this attractive.”

The store carries a full line of T-shirts, sweat shirts and other clothes emblazoned with the university’s Aztec logo.

“That means backpacks, caps, infant sizes, you name it,” Goodfriend said.

Television monitors peer down from the store’s ceiling, displaying highlights from Aztec football games as an enticement for customers to purchase tickets. And there will be at least one student worker available to answer questions and dispense brochures about attending SDSU.

Merchandise prices will be “modestly higher” than at the campus store to reflect higher operating expenses, he said. Aztec Shops pays no rent on campus. No public funds are being used to set up the new store, Goodfriend emphasized.

The UCSD satellite store will have a more academic focus because of its relationship with the extension program, bookstore manager Paul Mares said. The store will be open by mid-September.

“We’ll have some 2,000 to 3,000 titles,” Mares said, compared to the 100,000 titles carried in the main La Jolla campus store. But any book can be ordered electronically from the downtown shop, he said.

Mares expects a different kind of customer “because many will not be tied to UCSD as a student or staff member as they are on campus.” There might even be a T-shirt with a UCSD downtown logo to appeal to an older clientele, he said.