A Back-to-School Primer on Supplies
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 and more students use high-tech equipment.
Over the past year, companies eager for a share of the estimated $4-billion school supplies market have been introducing 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 for putting stuff away neatly.
The elimination of lockers by school districts across the nation, including many in Orange County, 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-size backpacks to hold it all.
“The one that’s blowing off the shelves is our new Big Student Pack,” said Rhonda Lewis of Wisconsin-cased 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 the usual fabric and 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 welcome, 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. The reverse side can hold four computer disks.
Over the past year, Xerox Corp. has 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 pockets, with tabs for labeling, offer students an easy way to stuff papers away neatly and quickly for handing in the next day or week--or perhaps even for getting those announcement fliers home from school intact. Unlike paper expanding files, this one cannot fray, pull apart or get crushed at the corners; it’s thin, light, stiffer and comes in the bright colors that attract kids.
The docit line also offers “punchless” plastic report covers that bind reports with a built-in clip that cannot fall off.
Student planning notebooks have been around for a couple of years, but they’re getting bigger and more involved as their popularity has taken off. Mead, Day Runner and other companies now have entire lines of organizers, spiral and loose-leaf style, with pages for notes, calendars, addresses and school assignments. Several now also offer storage space for computer disks as well as built-in rulers.
“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.
Day-Timer just introduced what might be the ultimate in student planners. In addition to the usual calendars, assignment pages and address books, these new binders have grade tracking sheets so students can be on top of how they’re doing in every subject; college/career tracking sheets so they can stay organized about where they are in the process of looking at and applying for colleges or jobs; forms for planning their projects; and pockets for calculators, cards and papers. Day-Timer sells via mail order.
Lunch boxes also will see some convenient changes this year. Instead of those bulky blocks of frozen blue stuff that keep lunch foods cool, Aladdin this year is introducing Icy Cools, reusable, flexible ice blankets that more thoroughly line the lunch box or can be wrapped around any item. They take up less space than ice packs and weigh less.
To make schoolwork more attractive for the younger set, Pentech has come out with washable markers that color at one end, and at the other end stamp the complete alphabet and all the numbers. Avery Dennison, king of office stickers, is marketing what it calls a Printertainment software kit that allows kids lucky enough to have access to a color printer to design and print their own stickers for fun or as decorative labels for report covers and other schoolwork.
Jacober said that in addition to classic school supplies, parents are buying educational items, such as fun-oriented workbooks for beginning mathematicians and readers, like never before.
“Companies are expanding into these interesting, education-related toys and products used to supplement the school curriculum at home,” he said.
Items mentioned above are available at stores throughout the county, including Sav-On, Staples and The Container Store. Mead’s Web site https://www.meadweb.com shows off its newest wares and allows direct ordering. Day-Timer can be reached at (800) 225-5005.
