A Vancouver company is hoping to build a business by helping cash-strapped post-secondary students reduce the huge fiscal burden of buying textbooks each year for university and other courses.
Big Mama Student Services Ltd., a textbook rental company with most of its clientele in the Lower Mainland, allows customers to choose the books they wish to rent and order them through its bigmama.ca website. The books are shipped to customers' homes via UPS or Canada Post at a pre-arranged time.
Ramona MacLeod, Big Mama's owner and founder, said the company, which was launched in September 2010, is seeing exponential growth.
"We've already doubled what we had at this time last year," she said. "We've hit about 2,000 users."
Most are post-secondary students, particularly business students and those in the social disciplines such as arts. Big Mama has also seen some business from home-schooled students, an unanticipated sector. "We weren't expecting them in our business model," said MacLeod.
While there are two similar companies in Ontario and others in the U.S., she said her service is unique to Western Canada. Its main competitors are campus bookstores and websites such as Amazon and Craigslist.
The most common criticism of Big Mama's service, MacLeod said, is the perception that students find it more economically beneficial to buy, use and then sell books, rather than renting them.
But she said students are often unable to do this because publishers frequently release new editions, making it difficult for the books to be resold. That reality affects Big Mama less, MacLeod said, because her customers are not limited to the local market, and older editions can often be used in other geographic markets.
For most up-to-date textbook editions, Big Mama's service offers savings of approximately 50% off the retail list price for one semester's rent, so most books have paid for themselves after two semesters of rental.
For shorter rentals, the service allows for savings of up to 75% off the retail price.
Customers rent the books for 60, 90 or 120 days (a semester) and can extend the rental for a fee. If they want to buy the books, they pay the difference between the rental price and the cost.
MacLeod said the company offers an unlimited selection. "We have access to up to 10 million different titles. If we don't have something, we'll bring it in."
Students also pay for delivery and return at the website's checkout. Pre-paid shipping labels are sent out with the books.
Big Mama also offers eBooks, but MacLeod said there has been little demand in this area.
"I think the students don't like them because they don't perceive that there is a value in them," she said. "Think about what your eyes feel like after they've been staring at a computer screen all day. Do you want more of that?"
Big Mama said it hopes to reduce the environmental impact of textbooks by promoting their reuse. It has also partnered with Tree Canada to plant a tree for every textbook rented. •
