As marketing manager of the UNM Bookstore, Anicia Esposito is the store’s holiday elf. She put up half a dozen trees, each decorated with a theme. New this year is a red tree replete with Lobo regalia and a silver tree bedecked with electronics, “like iPod accessories students want,” she said.
Photo: Anicia Esposito, marketing manager, UNM Bookstore
For the past three years the store has increased its general merchandise for the holidays. “We brought in a deeper product mix for campus customers. It is a convenience factor for them,” Esposito said.
Esposito is responsible for all promotions and advertising for all the Bookstore’s departments. In addition to the popular Faculty Staff Day, she organizes Game Day Friday, Apple Days, Dell Days and many author signing events.
The UNM Bookstore stands out among campus bookstores nationally. “Fifty percent of campus bookstores are now for-profit stores, not institutional stores like ours,” she said. She credits people from administration down for embracing self-sustainability for the store.
“We are proud that we pay for our bond on the building, payroll, utilities and administrative costs as well as being able to return a profit to UNM,” she said. In the last few years the store has increased its sales from $9.5 million to $15.5 million, much of it generated by increased promotion and visibility, Esposito said.
Away from the Bookstore, Esposito is up in the air. Her family – husband Scott and sons Shane, 11, and Jack, eight, have their own balloon, Salida del Sol, which Scott pilots.
And because both boys are in scouts, the Espositos also spend time on the ground, hiking, walking and camping.
Shane recently told mom, “I’m a Lobo!” Of course he is. Courtesy of mom and the UNM Bookstore, he sports the finest Lobowear.
Although born in Colorado, Esposito lived in many plDavid Brookshire in the West and Southwest before finishing high school in Seattle. She earned a bachelor’s in visual communications from Western Washington University. A chance visit to her sisters in Albuquerque following her mother’s death left her with a desire to move here.
“I fell in love with the luminaries and Old Town. It took me ten years to get here, but I’m home here with the Sandias, the many cultural influences and the red earth,” she said.
Posted by scarr at December 15, 2006 11:27 AM