Firms Help Students Organize for School
When it comes to shopping for back to school this year, the popular bywords are organization and computers.
With busy schedules of classes, homework and extracurricular activities, students and their parents feel pressed to keep supplies and paperwork organized. And accessories and storage items for computers are eagerly snapped up as more students learn to use high-tech equipment.
Over the past year, companies eager for a share of the estimated $4-billion school supplies market have introduced items to satisfy both desires.
As early as July, shoppers could find the back-to-school sections of stores stuffed with bigger backpacks, pack organizers, an increasing array of student planners and pouches.
Elimination of lockers by school districts across the nation means that students are lugging massive loads of textbooks and other supplies back and forth. In response, both JanSport Inc. and Mead Corp. have come out with giant-sized backpacks to hold it all.
“The one that’s blowing off the shelves is our new Big Student Pack,” said Rhonda Lewis of Wisconsin-based JanSport. “Schools are taking away lockers, and kids have to carry huge loads on their backs all day--so we made huge packs for them.”
The big packs are available in mesh for districts requiring kids to carry see-through bags.
JanSport also has a new “Blade Pack” designed to hold in-line skates as well as school items. Another style has a padded interior space for a laptop computer.
One new product from school-products giant Mead offers a more durable twist on the three-ring zipper pouches that students insert at the front of their loose-leaf binders to hold pens, erasers and the like. Instead of being made from easily ripped plastic, this pouch is made from stitched nylon, with sturdy zippers and metal-rimmed holes.
Over the past year, Xerox Corp. introduced a new line of organizer-friendly products marketed under the trademark docit.
Its 13-pocket expanding file makes for a backpack organizer that could easily eliminate the dog-eared work sheets and twisted homework papers that are a general plague of stuffed packs.
The docit line also offers “punch-less” plastic report covers that bind reports with a built-in clip that cannot fall off.
Student-planning notebooks are getting bigger and more involved. Mead, Day Runner and other companies now have entire lines of organizers, with pages for notes, calendars, addresses and school assignments. Several also offer storage space for computer disks.
“Their lives are stressed and busy, and they want to make their approach to school and life easier,” said Steve Jacober, president of the School and Home Office Products Assn. based in Ohio.
