WASHINGTON — The University of Maryland-Baltimore County bookstore is having trouble keeping up with all of the online merchandise orders placed since Friday night’s historic win over the University of Virginia.
The store has seen about 3,300 online merchandise orders since the win. It’s average for online orders is around 1,500 orders all year.
The 11 full-time employees and some student employees have been working around the clock all weekend to try to keep up with demand.
Bookstore marketing manager Erin McGonigle said she has never seen anything like it.
“We have an amazing team, and everyone has just been coming in,” said McGonigle. “We have a couple of people who are just unavailable because of [spring break], but everybody in the area has come in, or is dedicating time today, tomorrow, or the next day to come in and pull together to get this out.”
The store is asking for customer patience as employees do their best to fill the orders on time.
Meanwhile, there is already new merchandise on the way to celebrate Friday’s victory, and Under Armor will be coming out with new clothes too.
“We’re playing with the idea of ‘UMBC, You Must Be Cinderella,’ but other than that, we’re just letting our vendors have fun with it,” said McGonigle.
Customers are getting creative, too. One person had white-out and a sharpie sent out with their order, so they could “fix” their bracket.
McGonigle, who graduated from UMBC in 2008, is riding the Retriever Fever as well.
“It’s exciting from an alumni perspective, and exciting from the staff perspective,” she said.
Lee’s Pint & Shell, a restaurant in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood, hosted a watch party for Sunday night’s game against Kansas State.
An official watch party was also held on UMBC’s campus, at The Commons Sports Zone.
