Get your back-to-school story homework done now

It may seem like only weeks ago that kids and other students celebrated the last day of school.

And actually, it was just weeks ago!  But that isn’t stopping the nation’s merchants from kicking off stealth back-to-school shopping campaigns.

This past weekend’s sales circulars featured a variety of student supplies, including backpacks, lunch totes and notebooks at Target and all kinds of other school utensils at drugstores and other chains. Best Buy already is advertising a Next Class laptop loaded with Microsoft Student 2010.  And Walgreen’s is touting itself as the go-to site for sports and schools physicals with a  “study well + stay well” tagline.

Strategizing your back-to-school coverage now instead of a month or six weeks from now gives you a lot more options for interesting and informative business features.  The event – still generally considered the second-largest consumer spending splurge after Christmas – spans a variety of bests, including retail, small business, health care, the business of sports and personal finance.

The National Retail Federation should be coming out soon with its back-to-school consumer spending survey; last year’s poll found consumers planning to spend less, except on eletronics. Here’s another back-to-school consumer survey from Parents magazine and the Census Bureau’s handy Facts for Features release, which offers statistics about students and spending.

Most back-to-school items are small, low-margin items like pens, pencils, folders, paper.  Electronics are one exception; another is furniture and the ever-expanding list of dorm room essentials sold by home décor chains.   Either way, the shopping tends to take place at national chains.

One contrarian approach you could start on now is to find out which local merchants also benefit from school days shopping.  Perhaps you have local apparel or footwear dealers, or sports uniform distributors, or an independent office supply store trying to garner a few bucks each fall.  If you can find a handful of independent businesses willing to share sales data, you can create one of those ‘quirky local indicators’ we like to recommend.  Check in with them once a week or so to gauge spending trends and what’s emerging as must-have items.  Are consumers using cash or credit?  How does fall spending help retailers forecast for the holiday binge?  Developing a panel of local merchants now can help set you up for retail and economy coverage through the new year.

Other approaches:

Personal finance. Hone in on a niche angle; one of my former coworkers wrote about “the high cost of having a high school senior” to great reader feedback.  And readers are always hungry for money-saving dieas.  Check with school districts for the lists of required supplies teachers publish and compare them; take a sample list or two and find a local savvy shopper (perhaps on a mom blog) or hit the stores yourself to fulfill the lists in the most economical way.

Sports and extracurricular activities: Aside from the school-sponsored programs, how are for-profit athletic, educational and recreation businesses faring?

Health care. Which clinics, a la the Walgreen’s example above, are cashing in on back-to-school physicals and vaccinations?

Thrift stores. Are resale shops and purveyors of used sporting goods, second-hand musical instruments and other student goods seeing an uptick this year?