Sliding High

Plan now for the back-to-school craze.

Next to the holiday shopping season, it's the most wonderful time of the year--for retailers, that is. A real buying bonanza, this register-ringing period gets high marks for not only generating demand for a wide variety of merchandise but boasting a ready-made market of eager young consumers. We speak, of course, of back-to-school shopping.

According to a recent study by the International Mass Retail Association, parents allot about $70 for school supplies. Even more striking is the roughly $300 per child that's earmarked for new clothes. Factor in the occasional purchase of a calculator or a computer, and you're talking a whole lot of reading, writing and 'rithmetic.

And with the baby boom echo in full reverberation, school enrollment is expected to surge to 54 million-plus students by 2006. Now that's a learning curve.

This article was originally published in the April 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Sliding High.