A firm built so you don’t have to take its word for anything.
Most colleges treat the bookstore as a line item, when it’s a multi‑million‑dollar retail asset the institution owns — whether you license it to an operator or run it yourself. Under one roof there are four stores: course materials, branded merchandise, supplies and technology, and convenience — four businesses with four margin profiles, and almost no institution measures them separately.
If you’re outsourced, those four get flattened into one blended commission rate the operator set; if you self‑operate, they get flattened into one budget line nobody benchmarks. Either way you’re managing against a benchmark of one — yourself. NxtChapter runs the same formula on both, measures the gap against a peer set, and delivers a number rather than an argument: flat fee, no contingency, trust the math, not the pitch.
NxtChapter Campus Advisors, Inc. · a Georgia corporation · serving four‑year colleges and universities, with a first focus on private institutions across Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
The thesis
Trust the math, not the pitch.
Campus bookstore contracts are negotiated between operators who do this weekly and institutions that do it once a decade. We exist to close that gap — with a documented methodology, sourced benchmarks, and findings any qualified analyst can reproduce. The credential is the reproducibility, not the résumé.
Who we serve
Institutions of roughly 1,000+ students managing outsourced or hybrid bookstore contracts. Below that band, store revenue rarely justifies a consulting fee — and we say so in the first conversation rather than the last invoice. The engagement is built for the offices accountable for the answer: CFOs and VPs of Finance, Provosts, General Counsel, VPs of Auxiliary Services, and Chief Brand Officers.
Leadership
Justin Gamble, Founder and Managing Partner. Justin spent nearly two decades inside campus stores — on both sides of the table this firm now advises. He began with Follett Higher Education Group, advancing from Sales Associate to Team Lead to Store Manager over more than a decade, coordinating with a national network of 200+ store locations. From 2018 to 2024 he crossed to the institution side as Course Materials Manager at Kennesaw State University’s self-operated store, managing a $16.5M+ annual textbook program within $21.9M in total store sales — growing the DayOne inclusive-access program from $4.05M and 35 vendors to $5.95M and 55 vendors, delivering $1.56M in student savings across 35,000+ participating students, while cutting at-risk inventory by more than $300K and reducing missing-credit balances from $400K to $96K. Most recently, he returned to Follett as Store Manager at the Morehouse College Bookstore, growing store sales 20% in a year and a half and building a new technology-sales category from a negligible base to $80K+ in its first year.
That résumé is why the methodology looks the way it does: he has watched four businesses get flattened into one number from inside an operator’s reporting stack and inside a university’s auxiliary budget. Justin holds a B.A. in English from Morehouse College. Connect with Justin on LinkedIn →
What we will never do
Contact
jgamble@nextchaptercampus.com · Atlanta, Georgia. Or use the analysis brief form — one document, no follow-up sequence unless you ask for it.
Talk to the person who runs the analysis.
No sales team, no handoff — the Discovery call is with Justin directly. Sixty minutes, no cost, no obligation.