More In Store: Arch “Beaver” Aplin III ’80 Brings Retail Innovation to Texas A&M
Beaver Aplin’s gift creates unprecedented opportunities for marketing and retail education at Mays.
Arch “Beaver” Aplin III ’80 built a billion-dollar business empire largely based on a moment most parents would rather forget: standing in a grimy gas station restroom with his young daughters, realizing the facilities were barely adequate for adults, let alone toddlers.
“When you have a young daughter and you go into the Texaco station or the McDonald’s or whatever, the restroom facilities just lacked a lot,” Aplin recalls. “As a dad with a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old girl, a light bulb went off. And I said, you know what, this matters. This really matters.”
That light bulb moment — recognizing what customers actually need rather than assuming what they want — became the foundation of Buc-ee’s success. It wasn’t a marketing plan or a business model. It was simply paying attention.
“Marketing and merchandising to me is about identifying and recognizing who your customer likely is, what they’re likely looking for, and then give them more than what they’re expecting,” Aplin explains. “That, to me, is marketing.”
That philosophy — simple in concept, extraordinary in execution — has transformed Buc-ee’s from a single 3,000-square-foot convenience store in Lake Jackson into a cultural phenomenon with 55 locations across nine states. And now, Aplin is bringing that same spirit of exceeding expectations to Texas A&M University through a transformative gift that will reshape marketing and retail education at Mays Business School.
In early 2025, Aplin added $10 million to his original $50 million commitment to Texas A&M to create the Aplin Center, specifically designating the additional funds for Mays Business School and its Department of Marketing. The gift named the Arch H. Aplin III ’80 Department of Marketing and will provide an endowment for scholarships and a departmental excellence fund. Most significantly, it positions Mays marketing students at the heart of the university’s Aplin Center, the 211,724-square-foot facility currently under construction at the intersection of Wellborn Road and John Kimbrough Boulevard.
The decision to increase his gift wasn’t part of any grand plan. A conversation with Dr. Nate Y. Sharp, dean of Mays Business School, forged the connection and, true to form, Aplin followed his instincts, deciding to partner with Mays. “Before I knew it, I said, ‘Okay. What the heck, I’ll do that, too,’” Aplin says.
For Sharp the alignment was extraordinary. “It is a winning combination,” Sharp says. “Nobody understands branding and marketing better than Buc-ee’s or better than Mr. Aplin.”
The Competitive Advantage
Aplin may be humble about his marketing genius, but his track record speaks for itself. He’s the rare entrepreneur who turned clean restrooms into a competitive advantage, transformed beef jerky into a destination-worthy product, and made a cartoon beaver wearing a baseball cap into one of the most recognizable brands in America.
What excites Aplin about marketing education at Mays is the opportunity to share this hands-on, customer-focused approach with the next generation.
“I believe marketing can just be common sense mixed with curiosity and awareness,” Aplin explains. “We’re all Texans, we’re all Americans, so we have a pretty good feel for what looks and feels and tastes good. If you mix a little bit of curiosity and awareness, it doesn’t take much to figure out what would be appealing.”
That philosophy of curiosity and paying attention aligns with Mays’ vision for the future of marketing education. Sharp emphasizes that the department and its Center for Retailing Innovation are leaning heavily into marketing analytics, digital marketing, and artificial intelligence — tools that help decode customer behavior and preferences. But at its core, marketing remains about understanding and exceeding human needs and expectations.
“What was organic and intuitive to Mr. Aplin are the kinds of things that scholars at Mays Business School have been studying for decades,” Sharp notes. “Things like services marketing, retailing innovation, digital marketing, and even marketing analytics. Above all, I think Beaver was excited about our unbridled ambition at Mays.”
Aplin was also drawn to Mays’ audacious goal: to become the preeminent public business school in America. As someone who built Buc-ee’s by thinking bigger than anyone thought possible, he recognizes that spirit.
“The reputation of Mays Business School is growing at a rapid pace nationwide,” Aplin says, with evident pride. “It is a phenomenal business school. And we’re not through. I hope I can be involved in improving Mays Business School’s position on a nationwide level.”
A Living Laboratory
The Aplin Center will provide something unprecedented in business education: a living laboratory where theory meets practice in real time, on campus, integrated into daily student life.
At the heart of Mays’ role in the center is a sophisticated retail space that Sharp predicts will become “a magnet for all visitors” to campus. But this won’t be a typical university store. It will be a laboratory where marketing and retail students make actual business decisions with real consequences.
“Students will make real merchandising and buying decisions that determine what products are offered, how categories grow, and how customers are served,” explains Thomas McMillan ’05, director of the Center for Retailing Innovation. “They will build marketing and digital campaigns, analyze performance, and experience both the corporate and customer-facing sides of retail.”
“Marketing and merchandising to me is about identifying and recognizing who your customer likely is, what they’re likely looking for, and then give them more than what they’re expecting.”
While the final product assortment is still being defined, the retail space will feature a curated mix of products developed across the Aplin Center and beyond — including offerings from university programs, such as meat products from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ renowned meat science program, coffee from the coffee science lab, and ice cream from the dairy science programs, alongside additional products sourced and selected by retailing students. Mays marketing students will come together with their peers across campus to determine how these products are merchandised, marketed, and delivered to customers.
“Students from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and students from Mays Business School will be collaborating, cooperating, working together, learning from each other,” Sharp says. “That vision of interdisciplinary collaboration was something Mr. Aplin was very excited about.”
McMillan emphasizes that this goes far beyond the typical retail internship. “The Aplin Center is not about hourly roles,” he says. “It is about preparing the next generation of leaders who will shape the future of retail across every part of the industry.”
Students will have access to a rotating set of advanced retail technologies designed to mirror how modern retailers test, learn, and innovate. They will experiment with tools that capture customer behavior and decision-making, manage product assortments, develop brands, design customer experiences, and apply data and analytics to understand what drives performance — all within an environment built for hands-on learning and experimentation.
The center also creates opportunities for student entrepreneurs across campus. “Student entrepreneurs can pitch products to our student buyers and potentially earn shelf space to test and grow their ideas,” McMillan notes.
For Aplin, this hands-on approach mirrors his own experience. “I want the students to be really involved in the actual operation and management of the retail and the food and beverage,” he says. “There will be opportunities to not just learn about it, but to actually work within the field.”
Aplin’s gift also includes significant scholarship funding that will reduce financial barriers for students. Additionally, Sharp says the departmental excellence fund will enable “big, bold, audacious things that will set us apart from every other business school and every other department of marketing around the country.”
The research dimension adds an additional layer to the visionary center. Texas A&M marketing faculty are nationally recognized for their expertise in quantitative methods and consumer behavior research, but field experiments in real retail environments have been difficult to conduct. The Aplin Center changes that.
“It allows us to create knowledge right here on our own campus,” McMillan says.
A Perfect Match
When the Aplin Center opens in winter 2028, it will stand as a testament to what happens when entrepreneurial vision meets academic excellence.
Sharp sees the gift as perfectly aligned with Mays’ mission to develop leaders of character. “Mr. Aplin is a leader of character, a role model for our students,” he says. Aplin’s involvement elevates the program far beyond what a textbook or PowerPoint can provide,
McMillan says. “This is where innovation meets the consumer and where Texas A&M will prepare the next generation of retail leaders.”
As for Aplin, he can’t wait to see it all come together. “I’m just giddy about being able to do something to give back,” he says. “Education and the youth have such a soft spot in my heart.”
When the doors open to the Aplin Center, Mays Business School marketing students will step into a learning environment unlike any other in the nation — built by a man who never took a marketing course but who understands instinctively what every marketer strives to learn: how to exceed expectations, one customer at a time.
