Average back-to-school spending up $85 a family from 2011

Photo: AOL Daily Finance

We’re barely a month into the true calendar summer but many retailers’ most recent Sunday circulars are touting the first of what promise to be weeks of back-to-school sales.

Kmart aimed for the college crowd with a “Back to Campus Checklist” and deals on laptops, bedding, microwaves and plastic storage tubs.  Best Buy offered “the latest solutions for campus and beyond,” while Walmart and Walgreens trotted out traditional supplies like crayons, glue sticks and notebooks.

With retail sales slumping in June,  merchants no doubt are hoping that the annual pre-school stock-up will help bolster July and August.  According to the National Retail Federation’s back-to-school forecast, spending in the season will top $83 billion, including college student spending.

The average family with K-12 kids will spend more than $688, up from $603 this year, to outfit students for the new academic year.

In fact, K-12 spending alone will exceed $30 million, most of it on clothing and electronics.  The entire release discusses trends that can provide story nuggets, from increased teen spending to a resurgence in catalog shopping.

Even though spending is forecast to be up, the NRF’s own blog offers a note of caution, saying that consumers still are concerned about value, with more planning to purchase used textbooks, employ coupons and otherwise seek out bargains.  The used-goods niche would make for an interesting business or personal finance angle — how’s the market in secondhand dorm refrigerators, used musical instruments, thrift-store furniture and other pre-owned items?   In addition to bricks-and-mortar stores like Play it Again sporting-goods franchises, check out the traffic on Freecycle, Craigslist, campus bulletin boards, eBay (do a regional search) and online merchants.

In addition to family and student spending, the back-to-school season is a good time to profile businesses that serve during the school year.  Student laundry services are a neat little niche, for example, like Student Valet at the University of Illinois.

After-school child care programs are enrolling, and entrepreneurs are trying out services that help busy households like the Kidz Chauffeur, which ferries children to activities and appointments when parents can’t, or the GoToGals, who will run errands, plan a dinner party, organize an office and otherwise help time-strapped families.  I’ve often wondered how these personal service firms charge enough to make it worth their while without pricing themselves out of the market, and I bet your readers/viewers have, too.

The for-profit education industry is another fertile field for back-to-school stories. While for-profit colleges have received a fair amount of attention lately in light of the student loan crisis and accusations that they have poor graduation or placement rates, I think the for-profit K-12 industry is worth a look, too.  I had no idea, for example, that as this Forbes article points out, the charter school movement had evolved from a local effort to a corporate profit center.

And the administrative structure is confusing; poking around in my area, some charter schools managed by third-party firms advertise as tuition-free; how does that work?  T his Atlanta Journal-Constitution column takes a dim view and will point you to questions you can ask local boards and operators about accountability.  Start with your state’s education department and the federal Ed.gov portal on charter schools.