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News Sentinel, August 13, 2001
By Doug LeDuc
Some of Fort Wayne’s smartest shoppers can be found in a store that sells colored paper by the yard and a device called the Yacker Tracker traffic light sound meter.

The Yacker Tracker was designed to help manage class noise levels. The local store that sells it is United Art and Education, where thousands of teachers are stocking up for the new academic year on school and art supplies.

The retailer has a mail-order business in addition to its five stores, and that’s part of the reason Judy Platt tries to visit the company’s North Clinton Street location every year before school starts, she said.

“At our school we have a catalog that United sends us. We’ll come here and browse, then we go back and send in our order,” said Platt, who has taught at Churubusco Elementary for 13 years. “They’re pretty current.”

Keeping merchandise current, prices competitive and items in stock even when they’re out of season has contributed to steady sales gains for the company founded here in 1960, said Suzy Roberts, retail sales director.

The company started out with a mail-order business operated out of a 4,000-square-foot office and warehouse facility at 3736 Wells St.

It was sold in 1980 to its current owners, Dick and Betty Johnloz, who moved the operation to 4413 Airport Expressway, which was twice the size.

By 1988, the facility had been expanded to 20,000 square feet, and the company was mailing catalogs to every school in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky.

United Art and Education, Inc. opened a 10,800-square-foot store at 4111 N. Clinton St. in 1991, a 17,200-square-foot store in Castleton in Indianapolis in 1995, and a 23,000-square-foot store in Greenwood Corner Shopping Center in Indianapolis in 1997.

By the time the third store opened, the company’s catalog distribution reached every school east of the Rocky Mountains.

The local store was expanded to 15,000 square feet in 2000, and this year, the company opened a 14,000-square-foot store in Columbus, Ohio, and a 16,000-square-foot store in Dayton, Ohio.

The company has much larger locations than most of its competitors, who typically sell either art or school supplies out of stores with 2,000 to 4,000 square feet, Roberts said.

“Because we have larger stores, it seems like we have everything, and we do have a lot,” she said.

United Art and Education stores generally carry between 22,000 and 25,000 items, including some lower-priced merchandise not listed in its catalogs.

The size of the stores enables them to carry out-of-season merchandise such as Christmas posters in June, and this helps teachers with classroom budgets, Roberts said.

“A lot of times they have money they need to spend by the end of the school year, or they’ll lose it.”

United Art and Education stores are open to the public, and they get some business near the end of each school year from parents who buy items students can use during the summer to remember what they learned earlier.

The stores also get some Christmas shopping business from parents who favor educational games and gifts.

But teachers’ back-to-school shopping brings the company its heaviest sales each year, and United Art and Education begins preparing for it in the spring by visiting trade shows to update merchandise.

The size of the company’s work force fluctuates between 125 and 150, reaching its peak each summer, with the help of college students who have summer jobs in its warehouse and at some of its stores.

The school-supply part of the business has proved relatively immune to economic cycles, because “even if the economy isn’t that great…teachers are always going to need supplies,” Roberts said.

United Art and Education managers said it is not unusual for teachers to spend up to $500 a year from personal funds on school supplies.

“I think the teachers, especially in Indiana, Ohio and the Midwest, are certainly very committed and do whatever they have to to take care of their students,” said David Keith, retail operations director for the company.

“Often times, the budget doesn’t cover that (entire school supply cost), and it comes out of their pockets,” he said. “We see it over and over again.”

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