CBA Industry Blog

A "Tail" That's True

Mike Hockett is CBA’s Training & Development manager. He has more than 28 years of experience in the CBA industry, and he manages the CBA Consulting Program. For more information about how you can apply the principles Mike mentions below, send him an email.

You know how sometimes you buy a business book, read it and find it to be so boring that you fall a sleep every time you see its cover. Well, that’s the way it was when I first read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. Chris actually does a great job of explaining the Long Tail and illustrating some facts to back it up. For those of you who are Long Tail addicts and really understand everything that Chris says in his book you may find what I have to say elementary. However, I do think it follows much of Chris’s application in his more recent book, Long Tail, the Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. For those of you who sell books and especially Christian books, I think you will find what I have to say interesting and beneficial.

Here is my short take away and application of Chris’s book. There are many more products available over the Internet than are available in a retail store setting. This availability of additional product is called the Long Tail. If a retailer can identify this product based on customer demand and have it in-stock when the customer wants it, you have a sale – a sale that you would not have unless you carried the product in-stock.  When you do not have this product in stock, guess where your customer goes to buy it? You’re right the Internet. It doesn’t take this old retailer long to figure out that Long Tail product is worth finding and selling. After all it is usually product that you can make full margin on and you don’t have to carry large quantities. I am selling less of more.

Great Opportunities Abound...

CBA member retailer Gunnar Simonsen from Christian Supply Center in Portland, Oregon, emailed our team recently with some great information on what’s been happening in his area and how Christian Supply has been reaching out to the churches and customers in its community. We hope his words will spur your thinking and encourage you in your work.

The main thing right now is with the Momentum Conference. This is and has been grass roots the entire way. I just received word that we are now nearing 400 students registered for this event that was not even on our minds 60 days ago.

The beauty in this is that the heart is this... "It's not about the numbers...it's about the hunger."

This year, the Luis Palau organization is returning to their own backyard and holding a massive waterfront event in Portland. The last time they were here, we saw 150,000 people show up in a town that many say is the moat unchurched in America. What is so exciting about this year is that they have added a twist to the experience by calling on the local church community to rise up and commit to various service projects around the city. At their kickoff meeting this past spring, we saw 750 churches represented. It was an amazing event that called for Thy Kingdom come and not that of our individual churches or businesses. Meaning, it is not about my kingdom or yours, but His.

Making it work in today's economy

At least once a month, Kathleen sends out an email to all our member retailers asking them questions about relevant issues. Last month she received so many responses that she couldn’t possibly include them all in the Retailer Response section of the magazine. So we’ve decided to post a few here as well. The following answers are from Will Schremp, owner of Discount Bible Book & Music Store in Detroit, MI. Let us know what you think!

What are you currently doing (or would like to do) with your book sections to make them easier to navigate and more appealing to your customers?
New book fixtures would be nice.  We are still using homemade ones I built almost 30 years ago, repainted, of course. However, my guess is new fixtures would not increase sales as the product would not be any better displayed.

What type of publisher-provided marketing/merchandising support would be the most beneficial to your book sections? Why?
Here is where we are different than most other stores. We have offered "across the board" discounts of at least 10% for over 30 years, starting back when discounting was very unpopular. In the last 10 years are so we have emphasized the "bargain" end of our business, buying remainders, sometimes whole skids. In the past 4 years we have been buying front and back list from several publishers. We carry the majority of their list selling it at 30 to 50 percent off list, depending upon the discount we get.

Wish You Were Here!

CBA Retailers+Resources editor, Carrie Erickson, was in Nashville this week attending GMA. Below are a few of her thoughts on the week and the value of face-to-face connections. Sounds like it was a good week!

You know you’ve had a good GMA week when you sit down to write about it and fall asleep in your chair. Well, that’s one way I know, anyway.

After hardly a free minute the entire time I’ve been in Nashville, I finally finished my interviews and didn’t have an event to rush off to (at least for another hour). The quiet moment when I finally sat down for a quiet two seconds I promptly snoozed into dreamland. Guess the coffee I’ve consumed didn’t overcome late night concerts’ effects.

Now that I’ve come to coherence again, I feel like I’m sending you a virtual postcard. And on it I want to say:  “Wish you were here.”

Guest Blogger - Reading the Owner's Manual

Here at CBA, it has always been our hope that this blog would become the blog for the industry. While we’re still working to accomplish this goal (Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?) we’ve decided to give some of the other voices in our industry some platform time too on topics of their choosing.

Right about now though, our legal counsel is probably pulling his hair out, so we have to add the disclaimer that while these guest bloggers are part of CBA - the industry, they do not necessarily always represent the views of CBA - the association.

So that being said, let’s introduce you to our first guest blogger – Karl Tobien. Karl’s a WaterBrook author and he has some interesting insights into not only the film Expelled but how it relates to the freedoms we, as Christians enjoy, particularly here in America. Let us know what you think.

It's been several years - four of them to be exact - since I've been this excited about the news of such an urgently necessary, and mandatory, in fact divinely "appointed" film coming out: "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed," opening in theaters nationwide this Friday, April 18th!  The last Hollywood project to create this much national controversy and rightful notoriety from our atheist, God-hating, banner-waving buddies on our cultural "left," for essentially the same root cause, was Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.  In that historically and culturally unprecedented 2004 film, if you'll recall, "they" also wanted God expelled.