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September 29, 2009

“The best thing about having a student-run bookstore is that the business really caters to the students' tastes,” said Michelle Thilges, a senior art major from Hopkins, SC. “We always have students telling us what they'd like to see in the cafe or what designs they'd like to have on tee shirts.”

Thilges is one of six students who work at My Friend’s Bookstore in its new location, 112 Musgrove Street in downtown Clinton. Although two of its owners and the assistant manager graduated earlier this year, the bookstore is as much a student-run business as it was when Dana Waters and Scott Mumbauer began it from their dorm room in the fall of 2006.

“We are excited about keeping our title as a student-run bookstore,” Mumbauer said. “We feel this gives our staff of PC students a unique opportunity to serve their peers in addition to PC alumni and the City of Clinton.”

The student workers run the cash registers, prepare drinks and small lunches in the Blue Spoon Café, take and maintain inventory, work the merchandise table at home football games, and more. Their conversations with fellow PC students who shop at the store help make sure the bookstore always hears from students, a primary reason the bookstore was created.

Just as important, the conversations create a fun environment.

“Working in the downtown store has been so much fun because of how much I get to interact with the students,” said Mellette Johnson, a senior business administration major from Florence, SC.

My Friend’s Bookstore brings in new products based on surveys and suggestions of current students, alumni, faculty, and staff, according to Mumbauer. The store, which once sold only textbooks, now offers all sorts of merchandise, from notebooks and pencils to megaphones and blue hose.

Also, the store was remodeled to appeal to people on campus and in the community and to alumni and friends of the college.

“It’s rewarding to work for a company started by people who, just a year ago, were in the same shoes you're in now,” Thilges said.