Nebraska Book Co. in Lincoln, Neb., which grew from a college bookstore founded in 1915 to a company that at one time operated more than 200 college stores and had a wholesale textbook division, has gone out of business, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.
As of Wednesday, the majority of Nebraska Book's 114 full-time employees have been laid off, with about 30 employees staying on for another 4-6 weeks "to help liquidate the company." In an e-mail to staff, Nebraska Book Co. v-p Jennifer Goetsch attributed the closure to the pandemic, noting that when it "forced students off campus and into using digital content, we sold through much of our inventory and have not had sufficient funds to replenish it. Lack of inventory is the cause of the shortfall in sales we required to maintain the business."
The e-mail continued: "Please know that if there was a viable option to keep this great company going, we would have seized it, but we simply ran out of capital and time."
Nebraska Book declared bankruptcy in 2011 and closed its flagship store in 2015, but had expanded with the launch of a technology services company in 2018. Since 2020 it was majority owned by financial firm Concise Capital Management.