Follett Reviews

Unfortunately, the company is in serious trouble. The new ownership group is clueless and has hired individuals that are equally as clueless to shepherd the future. They have no clue how to handle a specialty retail business, and they are now of course, doing retail things that are deeply hurting the business. They're cutting hours to the bone, they're asking for ten times more work with less resources. They will do anything and everything to save a buck, and they simply don't care about their employees. It's a sad state of affairs and it is only a matter of time before they lose big school contracts for not being able to meet the needs of the schools they serve.

Where to begin... The best way to sum it up is this company has lost its way. What was once a fantastic organization that wanted to be BETTER than industry standard in benefits and the way they treated their employees has fallen dismally below standard. Minimal to no pay raises year after year, dwindling benefits, skyrocketing health care, and layoff after layoff have people working in a state of nearly constant anger and fear. While most functional areas are not hiring at the operational level (in fact, they're laying off), there always seems to be room for more VPs, SVPs, and EVPs. The company has become so top heavy in almost every area that there will soon be nobody left to do any actual work. Then there's the market in general. Follett, for the most part, no matter how hard they try to differentiate themselves, sells books. And they will never win on price. Even Follett employees with children know NOT to buy their students' books from Follett because they are obscenely expensive compared to the competition. They really have not been able to successfully make the transition to digital and, while there is debate as to how long the book market will remain viable, the market is contracting and Follett is feeling it. And, because they are so focused on books, they've lost site of the little technology division that had been so successful in the K-12 software market. Their one viable area may soon get crushed, even though it’s still a solid business – just based on renewal income alone – because the overall focus is on trying to stop the bleeding of the larger organization. While reorganization of the company and the introduction of shared services functions for some areas has provided some legitimate opportunities to reduce headcount, they're not laying off enough of the right people. Layoffs are more focused on self-preservation of senior management and protecting political allies than actually saving the organization money.