Look, this sucks. It does for everyone getting termed, and for everyone getting a demotion. But people need to face some facts.
This industry, educational retail, is a dying one that will only become more unprofitable as direct-to-consumer "vertical integration" happens with publishers. The further along the digital adoption timeline we go, the less anyone needs a middleman to facilitate a transaction between the publishers and students.
Which leaves us with Spirit merch. But that's only profitable in the big stores because the economy of scale. Sure, lots of people will buy University of Florida merch, of which we are NOT the sole provider, but only handfuls will ever want Eastern Tennessee Community College gear. And in most places, there is a local business that can provide the demand faster, cheaper, and to a better degree than Follett can.
So, yeah, it sucks. And yeah, Jefferson River Capital and all the other investors probably only made a short term investment to pump some cash out of the industry before dumping it on some other suckers. But the fact of the matter is that what's happening now isn't really any different than what's been happening all over retail for the last 15 years. Look at Target's Teams, or Walmart's GWP.
At the end of the day, Follett is a business and business exists to make money. The execs, ham-fisted as this rollout might be, are only trying to provide the best customer service to our customers (the investors; the people we deal with every day are our consumers) they can.