In a few short weeks, incoming college students across the country will be making trips to their on-campus bookstores to pick up everything from textbooks to collegiate sweatshirts. Now they can add another item to their back-to-school baskets: Bath & Body Works products. The Ohio-based personal care company will be rolling out kiosks and displays at more than 600 campus bookstores across the U.S. throughout the month of August.
“What we were really thinking about was obviously how to reach this customer, because it is an important customer to us,” said Bath & Body Works chief merchandising officer Betsy Schumacher.
After test piloting displays at college bookstores in the spring, Bath & Body Works has partnered with the distribution company ICM to bring in-store displays to college campuses across the country. Participating institutions include the likes of the likes of the University of Florida and Boston College and will range from HBCUs to Ivy Leagues and community colleges. Outside of duty-free retail, the college bookstore expansion marks the first time Bath & Body Works products will be sold outside of its own stores.
The displays will include a curation of products popular with teen and young adult consumers, like plug-in room diffusers suitable for candle-free dorm rooms and pocket-sized hand sanitizers. Those will be available in some of the brand’s best-selling scents, like Japanese Cherry Blossom and Warm Vanilla Sugar.
Brands like Maybelline, Glossier and Urban Outfitters have also courted that student demographic through on-site activations on college campuses in recent years. But Bath & Body Works’s new distribution at college bookstores will be a permanent fixture rather than a temporary pop-up.
“It is permanent because we’re a replenishment business. And so if you love a certain scent, you definitely want to come back and get it again,” said Schumacher. “We do hope to expand in the spring to some seasonal activity, as well.”
Bath & Body Works is joining campuses at a time when college bookstores no longer need as much shelf space for physical books, as students and faculty increasingly adopt digital platforms. A September 2024 report from Bay View Analytics found that college courses requiring only physical textbooks fell from 19% in the 2021-2022 academic year to 8% in the 2023-2024 academic year, even while 41% of faculty agreed physical textbooks were better for learning.
“The reason why there’s space for us is that so many of the courses now have their textbooks online,” said Schumacher. “What is really happening is the bookstore is becoming a place of community for this younger consumer, where they can go in and shop, and find some things that are exciting. And so using the space in a different way makes a lot of sense.”
Taking up those empty shelves gives Bath & Body Works another avenue to reach consumers who are largely already loyal to its products. Piper Sandler’s biannual Taking Stock with Teens survey has consistently found Bath & Body Works to be a top fragrance brand among American teens, with the April 2025 edition of the survey finding Bath & Body Works to be the No. 1 fragrance brand among teen girls and the No. 3 beauty destination among that same demographic.
But the affordable fragrance and body-care category has become more competitive in recent years with the growth of brands like Sol de Janeiro and Phlur. Bath & Body Works has experimented with other retail formats to cater to Gen-Z shoppers both IRL and online. The company arrived on TikTok Shop last fall, and in March, it introduced its Gingham+ store design, a new concept that includes larger aisles and interactive fragrance displays to encourage trial and discovery in-store.
For now, the bookstore displays will stick to core products in the Bath & Body Works range. But like the students it hopes to court, Bath & Body Works will also be taking its arrival on college campuses as a learning opportunity.
“We are approaching this as something that we’re excited about doing, and we’re learning how to best meet this customer,” said Schumacher. “By starting with our best performers, learning the reaction to that, looking at the categories and seeing what they’re responding to, it gives us the ability, with our agility, to flex to what we really see the customer loving.”
