The spring season is only just upon us, but you and your staff are already getting the jump on the fall in building your store inventory for the back-to-school season.

Whether it's textbooks, apparel, computers or digital cameras, new and returning students will rely on the bookstore to fulfill their various needs for the fall semester. How you prepare to stock your shelves involves a lot of planning, and there are a number of ways you can get the information you need to boost your inventory for the fall rush.

Attending trade shows, of course, is an invaluable way to discover the newest, hottest products available to the college market, and walking the show floor will open your and your employees' eyes to new ways to provide students with the best experience possible when they walk into your stores in late August or early September.

As bookstore personnel, you and your employees attend trade shows with the goal of making purchases that will benefit the stores, and ultimately the students you service. It is this one-on-one interaction with vendors that leads to flurries of buying activity, as companies display the latest in campus fashions, or the newest netbooks, or the latest in writing instruments in hopes of catching your eyes.

In this time of particularly tight budgets, for those of you who may not necessarily have the funding to travel to trade shows for your fall preparations, a new virtual concept to be introduced later this month will allow non-traveling bookstore employees to simulate the actual trade show experience, without ever leaving your bookstore and jumping on an airplane to another city.

On April 22, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. EDT, D&H Distributing will host its first Virtual Back-to-School (BTS) Expo aimed at the college bookstore market, with the goal of giving buyers the jump they need to get ready for the fall semester. The show essentially takes the time slot formerly filled by the Campus Computer Resellers Alliance's (CCRA's) annual conference, which merged with CAMEX this year.

This virtual expo comes at the time of year when many of you plan what items will be in stock for the fall, at the same time that manufacturers announce what back-to-school products they will roll out in June.

Just as if they were walking the show floor, participants can “travel” from one booth to another and examine some of the new fall items available for college stores, as well as chat with these vendors about their products, right from their own computers.

This unique virtual, interactive opportunity offers a supplemental resource for college stores, as you and your staff have the opportunity to speak with some of the major players in the world of computers, printers, portable entertainment devices, peripherals and other categories to discuss what items will be featured for fall back-to-school, without ever leaving your store.

Regardless of whether you're traveling to a live trade show or participating in a virtual trade show event on your computer, you have a plethora of categories to select from when adding to your store inventory.

It's not just textbooks, notebooks, laptops, PCs, printers and office supplies that have to be stocked for fall rush; it's also apparel, sundries, greeting cards, health and beauty care, gifts, consumables and more. Meeting student demand means that you must ramp up your inventory so that items fly off your store shelves come this fall.

This fall season promises to be a very exciting one for you, your employees and your students. As catalogs stack up and inventory proliferates for fall rush, there's only one way to cut it all down to size: let's get to work!