An Amazon Store with a Social Mission

The following post is from a loyal eComEngine customer, Textbooks for Change. The goal of posts like this is to help spotlight our customers and their missions.

“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” In 2013, that became more than just an old saying for Chris Janssen, then a student at Western University in Canada. Looking for a new way to raise funds for cancer and cystic fibrosis research with a university team, Chris noticed that many of his peers had stacks of old textbooks sitting in their dorm rooms. Chris ran a small textbook drive, and by reselling the books to younger students, raised $500 for his club.

It wasn’t until Chris traveled to Rwanda and Kenya at the end of his university experience that the idea of Textbooks for Change was fully formed. While students at home had an abundance of high-quality educational materials, the students that Chris was teaching in East Africa often shared a single photocopied textbook to learn in class. Chris took these lessons back home and, with his co-founder Tom Hartford, launched Textbooks for Change into the thriving social enterprise it is today.

A Social Business Model

Today, our mission is to provide affordable and accessible educational materials to students both locally and globally. By collecting used post-secondary textbooks from campuses and Goodwill locations across Ontario, we create a ton of social impact. We donate textbooks to campuses in East Africa, divert textbooks from landfills by recycling them, and resell a portion back to students in Canada at affordable prices through Amazon.

As of November 2015, we’ve donated 50,000 high-quality textbooks to three campuses in Africa, reused and recycled 71,000 textbooks, and with proceeds from textbook sales, have provided $131,500 in donations and microloans.

How it Works

We accomplish all of this through a simple, four-step process:

1. Collect textbooks from dropboxes in 18 locations around Southern Canada, as well as collection drives arranged by students.
2. Donate half of the textbooks to a number of universities in Africa.
3. Sell 20% of the books on Amazon. We keep the prices low so that students in North America have access to affordable textbooks. This is the revenue that allows us to keep operations going.
4. Recycle the remaining 30%.

A Cause that Creates Revenue

Through our Amazon.ca Store, we are able to sustainably run our operations. We are a B Corp, which means we use a business model to solve a social problem. By having a meaningful and authentic mission, we’ve sold 20,000 textbooks on Amazon to students at affordable prices.

Five Tips for Success as a Socially Driven Amazon Seller

Textbooks for Change is a company with a social mission. We collect textbooks from dropboxes and student drives and then we donate half of them to universities in sub-Saharan Africa. Twenty percent of the textbooks, however, are sold on Amazon. The eCommerce portion of our business is very important to us - it’s what keeps us going. So it’s very important that we maintain a great feedback score.

We’ve uncovered several things that help us succeed as Amazon sellers. Here they are.

1) Branding Our Amazon Storefront

We want consumers browsing Amazon for textbooks to be drawn towards us as a seller. In the “About Seller” section, we include our social mission of providing affordable and accessible educational material. We also hope the “for Change” aspect of our name is fairly obvious to potential consumers!

2) Include Our Story in the Product Insert

When we sell a textbook from our 4,000 sq ft warehouse, we include a small print insert that mentions our social messaging and encourages consumers to find out more. We’ve had people share these online with their followers and hope that it leads to more loyalty moving forward. It’s a small gesture, but an opportunity to interact with consumers more.

3) Follow Up with FeedbackFive

FeedbackFive allows us to automatically request feedback from customers. By following up with buyers, we’ve recently increased our Amazon seller rating to 99%. We can also share the social impact the buyer created. This has led to some awesome customer reviews on our page, which other Amazon consumers can read online. Since using FeedbackFive, we’ve noticed an increase in the number of customers who comment on the social mission.

4) Targeting Our Messaging Online

University and college students tend to buy textbooks during three key times: September, January, and May. Whenever students are looking to buy textbooks, we target our social media messaging to focus on our store. We make our messaging directly related to our value proposition: affordable textbooks that make an impact. Any opportunity to direct a potential consumer to our store is a good one!

5) Follow Amazon's Best Practices

At the end of the day, we follow the same steps and best practices as every other Amazon merchant. We make sure to have the lowest price for the textbook and have customer service, too. Our team lives by the “prompt and pleasant” model for addressing customer issues. This has led to tons of positive feedback, and often being the first listed seller for textbooks we have in stock. Having a social cause is a competitive advantage, but at the end of the day, we have to be able to be the best in every other category, as well.

Check us out online, watch our teaser video, and if you have any feedback, feel free to reach out to info@textbooksforchange.ca.

About Textbooks for Change

Textbooks for Change is a social venture and B Corp that provides affordable and accessible educational material to students both locally and globally. They currently operate at 18 campuses and various Goodwill locations in Canada. Textbooks for Change has donated 50,000 textbooks to university campuses in East Africa, intending to send 1 million textbooks in 5 years.