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Retail Alliance Marks 10 Years of Success, Adopts New Name
College Store Business Coalition Becomes “Collegiate Retail Alliance,”Celebrates a Decade of Achievement
Plymouth Meeting, PA, March 11, 2009--The Retail Alliance, a business coalition of independent college stores that shares and deploys best practices, is marking 10 years of successful innovation and collaboration and changing its name to the Collegiate Retail Alliance (CRA) to better reflect its focus on the college store industry.
CRA has more than 50 member stores whose combined annual revenues total nearly $1 billion. The organization’s wholly owned software company, RATEX Business Solutions (RBS), produces VisualRATEX™, the most comprehensive college store operating system and the only one owned and designed by collegiate retailers. CRA partners with leading suppliers such as Follett Higher Education Group, NACSCORP, and Ingram Book Company to help member stores deliver superior customer value through best-in-class supply channel efficiency and performance.
“Since 1999, our mission has been to develop and deploy the industry’s best business practices,” stated Richard W. McDaniel, President and Chairman. “By working in close collaboration, our members, partners, and the RBS team have created innovative solutions to improve the business operations of member stores and reduce costs. As we mark our tenth anniversary, I am extremely proud of our achievements and looking forward to launching new solutions and partnerships that will help CRA members continue to lead the way in this fast-changing industry.”
CRA will host a tenth anniversary celebration on Sunday, March 15 in Anaheim, CA during the 2009 CAMEX show sponsored by the National Association of College Stores. The organization also will celebrate its recent receipt of the 2009 Leveraging Excellence Award from the National Consortium for Continuous Improvement in Higher Education (NCCI) for development of VisualRATEX.
The members of the Collegiate Retail Alliance Board of Directors are:
- Richard McDaniel, Collegiate Retail Alliance President and Chair, Cornell University;
- Pamela Mills, Vice-Chair, CU Book Store, University of Colorado Boulder;
- William Simpson, Secretary/Treasurer, UConn Co-op, University of Connecticut;
- John Turk, UCSD Bookstore, University of California San Diego;
- Roger Reynolds, BYU Bookstore, Brigham Young University;
- Thomas Romantic, Cornell Business Services, Cornell University;
- Jere Warner, RATEX Business Solutions;
- Marc Fleischaker, Arent Fox LLP.
For more information, visit the Collegiate Retail Alliance website at www.collegiateretailalliance.com/.
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| Members and friends celebrate CRA’s 10th anniversary. | Pam Mills of UC-Boulder and NACS’ Cindy Thompson catch up. | Jere Warner of RBS, Jerry Lynch of Follett, and Mario DiMascia of RBS enjoy the event. | Bill Simpson of UConn and Rich McDaniel recall ten years of collaboration as CRA Board members. |