One Is The Loneliest Number

Chancellor Subbaswamy is proud of being #1 (out of 1858)

It will be interesting to see if Chancellor Subbaswamy gets to keep his top dog #1 UMass license plate, which actually does look lovely on his Lexus.

The Globe says: only 1554 UMass license plates sold. I say: only 1,500 more to Go @AlumniUMass Go UMass! http://t.co/ACIg5CueEy

— Kumble R. Subbaswamy (@KSubbaswamy) May 25, 2015

Chancellor was unconcerned with Boston Globe May 24 story on slow sales 

Although I would have liked it a tad better if designers had made room for "Amherst" somewhere on the plate.

The UMass license plate program, making UMass the first university in the state to have one, has been fraught with problems since first being seriously discussed over ten years ago.

The Registry of Motor Vehicles will not even fire up the presses until 1,500 have been preordered and even then an additional 1,500 need to be sold by the end of the second year bringing the total on the road to a minimum of 3,000.

That two year anniversary just passed in October and the current number of plates on the road is only 1,858.  Not even close to the 3,000 required.

The Alumni Association had to put up a $100,000 performance bond to guarantee 3,000 plates would be sold so now the state can keep all or part of that.

The University only makes $28 per plate sold and for a while the AA was paying the $40 plate fee and $20 swap fee in order to stimulate sales but even that failed to move numbers in the right direction.

 Click to enlarge/read

 6/6/15 minutes of Board of Directors meeting

In June the Alumni Association Board of Directors by unanimous vote allocated $150,000 to "support the license plate business plan" to reach the 3,000 goal by October 1st. 

Coincidentally enough the Boston Globe did a story on 5/25/15 shining a light on lousy sales using the total figure of 1,554.

Thus an entire summer plus September and October -- and a $150K -- only managed to bring the number up to the current 1858

Will be quite a while before this # sees the road, if ever

And with only 1858 plates sold in our state boasting 120,000 (hopefully proud) UMass/Amherst graduates, that makes for a 1.55% market penetration.  I give that an F.