ASUCLA weathers large sales drop
By Sean Greene
Jan. 31, 2010 10:31 p.m.
The Associated Students UCLA suffered its worst sales drop during the current fiscal year, said Bob Williams, ASUCLA executive director, in the monthly board of directors meeting.
“We’re still in some pretty challenging times in terms of sales,” Williams said. “People are still trying to watch their expenses, especially in computers.”
Because ASUCLA is a nonprofit organization, however, Williams said the association can operate on a much lower profit margin that a regular business can.
“We can survive with a net income of $300,000 a year,” said Rich Delia, ASUCLA financial director.
The goal is not to maximize profits like a regular business would, Delia said, but the association must still make money to achieve its primary goal of providing services to students, faculty and staff.
Williams said he sees the glass as half full, and the new focus of the association will be to offer “the more compelling product at the best price.”
Despite this fiscal year’s $3 million sales downturn from last year, ASUCLA still maintained a strong net income, with the bottom line only off $107,000 for the month.
After the computer store lost $1.6 million in sales compared to last year, ASUCLA is undergoing talks with Apple to sell the new iPad in the Ackerman store.
“If there’s any way we can have the iPad, we will certainly have it,” Williams said.
The association maintains a reserve of $11 million, but will soon pay $3 million to the Cooperage for renovations done last year, an expense the board planned for, Delia said.
To avoid further expenses, the board is avoiding spending in capital expenditures, while continuing its selectivity in which projects to take on.
“I think we’ve done what we need to do to keep the losses as small as possible,” Delia said.
In December, the campus closure and rainy weather contributed to the loss of sales for both the UCLA Store and food services, but especially in the catering and concessions departments.
Much of the lost sales, however, were mitigated by the ongoing staff restructuring efforts within the association, he added.
“When we get out of this mess … our sales structure is going to be very efficient,” Delia said.
January was a little better than December, he said.
Sales were off 12 percent against plan, but BearWear was up compared to last year. Food service was down 14 percent across the board, Delia said.
The association looks forward to its annual Valentine’s Day sale on Feb. 11. Williams said the event will follow closely with October’s Halloween sale, which brought $50,000 in higher-than-expected sales to the association.
In Friday’s meeting, the board of directors also heard two action items regarding members’ responsibility to their constituents and student stipends.
The proposed “Policy on Responsibility to Constituents” would place guidelines to help the student board members to report back to students, said Bernice Shaw, board of directors vice chair and undergraduate representative.
Williams said the policy was only proposed to clarify the roles of the board of directors to their constituencies.
“Sometimes, it takes a little more than marketing to connect with the community,” Shaw said.
The policy was written vaguely to allow board members to reach out to students in their own way, a feature admired by undergraduate representative Jesse Rogel.
Shelley Schwartz, board of directors chair and graduate student representative, said there has been no evidence of representatives not communicating with the student body.
The board will review the policy during its next retreat.
The board also tabled another item to approve the increase of student representative stipends.
The ASUCLA stipend policy states that student stipends would cover all of the representatives’ student fees.
If fees increase more than 10 percent during the year, the board of directors must vote to approve the stipend increase.
If fees go up less than 10 percent, the stipend increases automatically.
Rogel said he and other undergraduate representatives felt it was a conflict of interest to vote on their own pay.
Shaw added that whoever wrote the policy did not think the UC Board of Regents would raise fees so drastically in one year. She expressed concern that at this rate, the board would have to vote on a stipend increase each year.
