or more than a decade, Phil Franca had hundreds of Blue Book Exam booklets gathering dust in the back of University Stationery Co.’s storage room. In a day, they were bought by a disgruntled MIT professor, who declared that his students would no longer be using computers and phones during exams.

“All of a sudden, bang! He said, ‘Yeah, we’re not gonna use them, we’ll use these for tests now, because no more laptops for tests or quizzes,” Franca says.

I’m lingering between the shelves, browsing through a stack of notebooks and pens, when I overhear Franca recounting this story to a customer from his station at the front register.

Franca, a longtime employee at University Stationery Co., says this is part of an increasing demand for stationery supplies at the store, which was barely breaking even during the pandemic. With the rise of artificial intelligence and digital devices, students and teachers alike have become more inclined towards using analog stationery.

“We’re shifting. And then now they seem to be coming back towards paper and pens,” he tells me. “As I said, I’m not sure how long we’ll be here, but we’re here for now anyway.”

Franca tells me this in early February, when the store’s future still seems to be in limbo. In January, University Stationery Co’s owner Gail Seidman passed away. Seidman, who had inherited the business from her parents, was the last surviving member of the family in Boston.

Despite the hard work of her employees and close friends — Franca and Betsy L. Spitzer — to maintain the University Stationery Co., the store’s finances have been susceptible to the ever-fluctuating consumer appetite for physical stationery. The MIT professor’s purchase proved to be a temporary reprieve for the multigenerational business, which has struggled with engaging its old customers following the pandemic.

Seidman’s only remaining relative, a nephew, lives on the West Coast and was unable to take over the store. With its lease expiring soon and a potential buyer who backed out of the deal right before Seidman’s death, the almost 100-year old business will permanently close its doors before the end of 2026.

Since Seidman’s death, Spitzer and Franca have been busy sorting through the final pieces of their stock before the business shuts down. They’ve taken items sitting in storage for decades over the past 75 years — calendars dating back to the ’90s and thick manila envelopes that have discontinued manufacturing — and put them back on the shelves to liquidate before the store closes for good.

“We have to sell it to make money, the oldest stuff. We’re at the point where it’s been around for so long, if we don’t sell it for something, we’ll get nothing for it,” Franca says.

A Local Landmark

To passerbys, University Stationery Co.’s storefront, marked by a human-sized yellow pencil, has become an iconic part of the Cambridge scenery. It’s one of a kind: Cambridge no longer allows people to put signs perpendicular to a building.

“When people come to buy, it’s a great landmark. Say, ‘look for the yellow pencil,’” Franca says.

This is one of the many changes that have been made to the store since Seidman’s father founded it in his home basement in 1929.

During the advent of the computer boom in the early 2000s, the Seidmans were afraid that new technologies would bankrupt their store. But the business recovered. University Stationery Co. became a supplier for local restaurateurs, commercial businesses, and professors’ offices. Despite competition from larger chain brands like Target and Staples, Seidman and her team cultivated strong bonds with locals.

“The one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the customers are extremely loyal,” Franca says. “We’re always the first stop, first call, or whatever because they would rather buy from us than they would from anybody else.”

Despite cheaper alternatives nearby, both Spitzer and Franca say that Seidman’s ability to connect with other vendors led to over 40-year long relationships. During Seidman’s stay in the hospital in early January, customers would often check in on the progress of her treatment.

Franca and Spitzer have also built their own rapport with customers. Franca, who joined the company in the 1990s after working at another office supply company based in Boston, shows me a couple of items he’s set aside for a customer who’s been collecting odd items from the store for years: erasers from the 1940s and 50s and a few brass stencils. He gently picks up one of the erasers, long and pencil-shaped.

“You probably could still use it, you know, because back then, that’s when stuff was really made,” he jokes as he slides the containers back into their glass case.

A Family Business

After a successful decade-long career as a manager at Honeywell International, Seidman quit her job to join the family business when her father passed away in the 1970s.

“She wanted to keep it because her mother wanted to keep it going,” Franca says. Her brother Barry Seidman, a retired Air Force pilot, joined the business in 1982.

The business grew under their joint leadership and became a “community anchor” for restaurateurs and the local universities. As her obituary describes, “Gail nurtured and expanded it with a blend of business acumen and personal warmth, earning the trust and admiration of customers who often became friends.

In 2000, Spitzer joined her friend to work part-time at the shop.

The two met at a wedding. Both were in the bridal party and quickly hit it off. “We clicked it off and had similar values and likes and dislikes and became very good friends,” Spitzer says.

Spitzer is the only one manning the store when I visit a second time. She’s wearing a pink sweater with glittered butterflies embroidered onto the front, a shock of color that matches well with the assortment of sticky notes and rainbow-colored stationery around her. As we talk, she frequently stands up to attend to the customers who enter. Most of them seem drawn to the store by the large pencil at the front, just like I did, peeking around the shelves before wandering out the door.

Sometimes, someone buys a card or a pack of pencils.

“You know, a card here and a card there and things in the store were not sufficient to keep us financially viable,” Spitzer says. Instead, their business primarily relied on large orders that they were able to sell from their warehouses.

During the pandemic, strict regulations affected their business, a familiar story for local owners. With the help of their landowner and loyal customers, the store was able to pull through. Lately, however, with the loss of some of their bigger commercial customers and the sinking demand for office supplies because of at-home work, the store has been more sensitive to people’s changing tastes.

Franca says that the business can very clearly feel when people are less willing to buy items. “Everybody’s hurting for money now,” he says.

The business especially took a hit when Seidman was in and out of the hospital for lymphoma and pancreatic cancer treatment, leaving Spitzer and Franca — the only other employees at the store — keeping the business afloat.

Spitzer says she misses her friend, who was a local bedrock of the community. “It will be very hard. I will miss not only coming in every day, but the people involved, the customers, a couple of the suppliers that had known Gail and Barry and her mom. Actually, I think one that I’m thinking of probably even knew her dad,” she says.

“It’s very, very strange. She’s not here, but she’s here,” Franca says. “We assumed that we’d have at least three to six months, I’m not sure what the prognosis was but she was there three days,” referring to Seidman’s stay in the hospital.

Franca’s not sure where he’ll be following the closure of the store. Given his expertise in the industry, he has thought about working at a few other of the specialty stationery stores in the area.

Both Franca and Spitzer express concern for the other and their futures once they leave University Stationery Co. for good.

“Betsy is over 80 years old. She was – she’s been – she was Gail’s best friend for over 50 years, and she worked here full time too,” Franca says.

When the store closes, Spitzer plans on finally retiring. But she continues to think about what Franca will be doing. “He’s got some big decisions to make, yeah. But hopefully it will work out for him. I worry,” Spitzer says.

Before I leave, Spitzer shows me a photo of Seidman from a small newspaper clipping. She looks wistful. She’s standing in the middle of three shelves, packed with folders, notebooks, and clipboards, her side profile to the camera.

It’s a stark difference from the stock of University Stationery Co. today, with inventory that dwindles by the day. I can see how painful the store’s closure is to Franca and Spitzer, and the customers that have long-frequented the space.

“Phil and Gail and I were like family, my whole family,” Spitzer tells me.

“There will be a lot of people that will be very upset that we are leaving, as am I,” she adds. “It’s the end of an era of family run businesses.”

—Associate Magazine Editor Claire Jiang can be reached at [email protected].