CBA Industry Blog

Amazon targets brick-and-mortar in app attack

Amazon releases app that lets consumers check prices in physical retail stores in comparison with Amazon prices; offers $5 discount Dec. 10 as an incentive.

In a press release from yesterday, Dec. 6, Amazon announced their newPrice Check app and an incentive program on Dec. 10 meant to get consumers signed up and using the app.

According to the Amazon press release:

“Year-round, the Price Check by Amazon app allows shoppers to makesure a deal is really a deal. And on Dec. 10, the simple act of price checking while shopping in physical retail stores will get customers an additional 5% discount (up to $5) off Amazon’s price on up to three qualifying products in eligible categories, including electronics, toys, music, sporting goods and DVDs. Amazon anticipates December 10^thwill be one of the biggest days of the year for Price Check.

“ ‘The ability to check prices on your mobile phone when you’re in a physical retail store is changing the way people shop,’ said Sam Hall, director of Amazon Mobile. ‘Price transparency means that you can save money on the products you want and that’s a great thing for customers. Price Check in-store deals are another incentive to shop smart this holiday season.’

“In addition to these one day, in-store deals, shoppers can also start submitting in-store prices with the Price Check app, ensuring they are really getting a deal and allowing all Amazon customers to get the lowestprices year-round.

“ ‘We scour online and in-store advertisements from other retailers, every day, year-round. Now, we are enabling customers to use thePrice Check app to share in-store prices while they search for the best deals. This is a powerful opportunity for customers to get involved and ensures Amazon customers get the best possible prices,’ said Hall.

“The Price Check by Amazon app is available for iPhone and Android and can be downloaded for free from the Amazon Appstore, Android Market and App Store for iPhone. Price Check appusers can ‘price check’ using four input methods:

•  Scan a barcode: Amazon's barcode scanner will match an item and provide pricing from Amazon.com and other online merchants in seconds. One exclusive feature to the Android version of Price Check is the ability to scan in either portrait or landscape mode, making it faster and easier to find products.
• Snap a picture: Snap a photo and instantly match the picture to books, DVDs, CDs, video games and more.
• Say the product name: Speak the name of a product to return accurate product matches and pricing from Amazon.com and its other online merchants.
• Type your search: Type the product name to instantly find products and prices.”

What do you think?

Comment below.

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Bureaucrats push unionization to small shops

If there is any question that the federal government is working to make it easier for people to depend on government and tougher for small businesses to succeed, its final ruling to notify and encourage employees to form unions is another example. The current administration wants to make the U.S. more like Europe (we see how great Europe is doing) and cut off individual bootstraps. So, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board is requiring all businesses to post notices by Nov. 14 that workers have the right to form a union.

The rule means any private-sector business (with specific exclusions for the U.S. Postal Service and the government) must comply with this added government invasion into your business affairs. If you sell less than $500,000 annually or have an annual “sales inflow or outflow” of at least $50,000 (such as ordering product from out-of-state vendors) you must post the pro-union notice.

It is common knowledge that anyone can form a union. This heavy-handed practice only encourages people to try to get something for nothing. And when you’re a small business, there isn’t something to get. These types of rules made by unaccountable bureaucrats will only suppress job creation, not encourage it. We need the stimulus of individual creativity and a strong work ethic, not enabling the cultural mandate to slide by on somebody else’s dollar.

Businesses need fewer regulations, not the uncertainty that more are coming to constrain business. 

Pick up the required poster at local NLRB offices or download it here.

Read the notification.

Read the Federal Register rule posting.

Comment on CBA’s Facebook page.

 

Amazon tax deal may boost Main Street Fairness

The deal Amazon.com struck with California’s Legislature last week to postpone sales tax collection and payment for sales into the state through September 2012 could spark quicker acceptance of the proposed federal Main Street Fairness Act’s administrative solution. Under the deal with California, Seattle-based Amazon agreed to collect sales taxes after the 2012 deadline unless Congress approves action on Internet sales taxes before then.

The Main Street Fairness Act is in congressional finance committees for review (in the U.S. Senate: S 1452; U.S. House: HR 2701; Find current bill status at Thomas.gov).

The Streamline Sales Use Governing Board is the agency developing the administrative process for tax collection and distribution, and has been since the 1990s.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the latest Main Street Fairness Act in July saying the act would create national standards and consistent policies so Internet retailers could collect and pay sales taxes simply and efficiently – and not have to match 50 different sets of state and local sales tax laws. Durbin told reporters national legislation is the best solution to prevent state-by-state struggles like Amazon and other Internet retailers are facing.

California is reported to have conceded to the year-long delay in tax collection required by its law that went into effect in July because Amazon was not paying the taxes, which could amount to more than $200 million during the period.

Amazon even tried to use California’s citizen initiative process to encourage residents to overturn California’s law.

Amazon had fired its local affiliates in an effort to avoid nexus and challenge California’s rules under U.S. Supreme Court rulings that exempts state sales taxes if a company doesn’t have a local presence. New York State is fighting Amazon lawsuits over similar nexus legislation. The California deal means Amazon and other Internet-only retailers can bring back local affiliates who may operate without collecting sales taxes through September 2012. California Gov. Jerry Brown has until Oct. 9 to sign the state’s AB 155 before it would pass into law without his signature.

California hasn’t officially adopted the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement. However, it would have to implement provisions of the Main Street Fairness Act to establish its collection authority. The agreement and the act are intertwined as the agreement provides uniform definitions for products, tax filing requirements, and other rules. So far, 24 states have signed the agreement, including Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

The proposed act would exempt small retailers. “Small” is not defined but is expected to mean those that sell less than $500,000 in annual remote sales into a state.

 

Class-action suit targets e-book "Agency Model"

The “agency model” – a business strategy to protect the value of publishers’ content – has been challenged in a class action complaint filed Aug. 9 in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, by Seattle law firm Hagens Berman.

The suit alleges that Apple, its CEO Steve Jobs, and five publishers conspired to control e-book prices, some of which now are higher than hardcover book prices. The conspiracy was designed to thwart Amazon.com’s e-book market dominance, driven by its policies to sell e-books at or below cost to gain market share.

The suit contends that publisher agreements with Apple allowed the company to force publishers to discount e-book prices on bestsellers below certain minimum ranges “to compete with brick-and-mortar bookstores and competing online sites.”

The publishers – called the Agency 5 in the suit – are Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. No Christian-publishing divisions or imprints are named in the suit as others are.

Random House was forced in March to “join the cartel [Apple] had helped to create to raise prices” because Apple banned the publisher’s titles from its online e-book store, according to the lawsuit.

Publishers are positioned in the litigation as forcing Amazon.com to adopt the agency model with help from Apple, even though Amazon had controlled 90% of the e-book market at the time and was taking market share by undervaluing content.

Apple and the named publishers colluded to increase prices to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon “to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing.”

The suit contends the agency model is unfriendly to consumers, and points out European, Texas, and Connecticut antitrust regulators are investigating the publishers and the agency model.

The suit seeks a jury trial and various claims for damages and attorney fees. 

Read the lawsuit.

 

 

Internet tax-fairness bill to be introduced

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is expected to introduce the Main Street Fairness Act today. The bill would enable states to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax whether they have a physical presence in the state or not.

The act supports a system set up in the 1990s to enable remote sellers to collect and forward tax revenues to states. The legislation would simplify a process that was so complicated the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 in Quill vs. North Dakota that retailers are required to collect sales tax from out-of-state customers only if retailers have a physical presence such as a store, warehouse, or office in the customer’s state.

The Main Street Fairness Act allows states that have adopted the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement – which was developed to simplify sales tax laws in response to the Supreme Court ruling – to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax whether they have a physical presence or not. The bill would cover all “remote sellers,” which include online retailers, catalog merchants and “1-800” offers on radio and television.

CBA Executive Director Curtis Riskey said, “The fairness act will level the playing field for brick-and-mortar retailers who suffer as much as a 10% price disadvantage in some states because of unfair sales-tax laws.” He said local businesses contribute to local economies with jobs and tax revenues that pay for police, fire, parks, and other local services that Internet-only retailers avoid.

The National Retail Federation’s Senior Vice President for Government Relations David French said the act is a congressional fix to a constitutional problem.

Click for more on the Main Street Fairness Act.

Comments?

 

It’s time to to worship God and preach the gospel …

I can no longer in good conscience continue to write about the stuff of this world and how it will make our businesses better without first writing about the things of Heaven and how desperately we need to return to being about these things and not that stuff.

My friends, our predicament reminds me of a passage in the Bible: “Then some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowds to their side. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of town, thinking he was dead. But as the believers gathered around him, he got up and went back into the town. The next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe.” (Acts 14:19-20, NLT)

They came after him because why?

We got into this industry because of the transforming power of Jesus Christ and the impact it had on each and every one of our hearts. We certainly didn’t come into this industry to become wealthy by the world’s standards.

We came into it with zeal to change lives. In this, this type of posture doesn’t sit well with the opposing forces of the Kingdom of God.

So, the battle was on and now, here we sit. Or in some cases, here we lay upon the ground appearing dead. But, do you see what happened next to Paul? He preached the Good News and made many disciples.

My friends, do you feel like you’ve been stoned and dragged out of the city? Do you feel like you’re dead?

You may have remained steadfast all along, yet still you find yourself apparently dead. You may have lost your way at some point and perhaps were the ones who unknowingly cast the first stone, only sadly missing the fact that your very self was the target, and so you, too, find yourself lying there apparently dead.

Whichever the case, it’s not important how you found yourself apparently dead upon the ground. But do you notice what Verse 20 says? It says, “But as the believers gathered around him, he got up and went back into the town that he was dragged out of and left for dead.”

I believe it’s time that we gather and get back up to then return to our cities with that same zeal to worship God and preach the gospel. But no longer on our own…now together as one.

Gunnar Simonsen

(To see Gunnar's full column in Retailers + Resources magazine, register for a free subscription to the digital magazine.)

Gift sales: all the world's a stage

Three basic types of gift and specialty products bring customers into the store. Retailers should review these products like a movie director, as every product category has actors with “cha-ching” potential.

 Like a blockbuster director, retailers should envision the role each product will play and decide how it will perform to meet their needs. In a product audition, “To be or not to be” is the question that’s answered by the role it will carry out in the store. Retailers should select store merchandise in terms of the quality of their performance and the emotional/psychological impact they can have on their intended audience.

 Sherry Morris of Carpentree sees the process as a three-act play.  Simply put, every product sold in Christian retail has a speaking part. In every blink of the eye, the customer receives a message from product “speak.” At some level, customers feel the psychological and emotional impact of what the products say about the store.

 Knowing how each gift fits into the play -- a product strategy -- helps retailers both make good buying decisions on core inventory as well as plan for seasonal and other gift needs. To maximize each item’s potential for increasing profits, set the stage with a good strategy.

Read her column in the latest Retailers + Resources magazine, sign up for a free subscription.

 

Message to honored guests after successful ICRS

“It’s hard to believe that ICRS was wrapping up a week ago! All of us at CBA enjoyed hosting you as our honored guests at the Show, and we hope you were able to meet all your business needs—and have time for fellowship, worship, and some fun in the process!

“Because we’re always looking for ways to improve the ICRS experience, we’d love to get your input on what you liked and what you disliked about ICRS 2011—and what you’d like to see next year for ICRS 2012 in Orlando, FL.

“Although we’ve already sent out more formal survey forms that we hope you’ll fill out and return to us via the Web (Attendee Survey, Did Not Attend Survey, Exhibitor Survey, Attended Training Survey, and Attended as Media Survey), I’d still like to hear from you personally about your experience at this year’s Show. You can send your comments directly to me at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you and learning what we can do to continue to improve ICRS for you and for the industry as a whole.

“And, I want to offer my sincere thanks to you for joining us this year at ICRS. You inspire me. Thank you for doing what you do! And if you couldn’t join us this past year in Atlanta, I hope you’ll be able to join us in Orlando. Please let me know what we can do to ensure you’ll be there with us July 15-18, 2012!”

By grace alone,

Curtis Riskey

Executive Director, CBA

 

“License Plate” receiving here for Christian stores

Spring Arbor lets you receive shipments with a bar-code scan, if your POS system lets you. Imagine receiving scanning boxes and then just shelving product with no manual check-off lists, no re-entry into the POS, no jerry-rigging electronic purchase orders to be receiving documents, and no manual re-checking when the invoice comes?

Spring Arbor Distributors and parent company Ingram Book Content Group has been successful in working with numerous POS systems to make it happen for Christian stores, including Booklog, IBIDie, Revelation Retail, PRAIZ, and ExtremePOS.

Terry Greer, manager of Ingram Data Services, said the company developed the required electronic data interchange (EDI) documents using the publishing industry’s transaction standards for the purchase order, purchase order acknowledgment, advance ship notice, and the electronic invoice. While the advance ship notice (ASN) has been in use for several years, it has been difficult to make it available to Christian stores because industry POS providers couldn’t make the integration happen.

Greer said accuracy rate in tests is above 99%, meaning it typically would cost more to find an error than receive the credit or pay for extra product. Each box in a shipment has a license plate, so if a box gets lost, the receiving data can’t upload and the ASN and Invoice won’t reconcile. If boxes arrive at different times, the scan still associates the box with the original purchase order. The purchase order is the controlling document in the pick-and-pack process adding a final accuracy check.

“The time savings in doing license-plate receiving is well worth any risk of loss from an incorrect shipment,” Greer said. 

“This really encourages a better environment for booksellers,” Greer said. “With shrunken staffs and thin resources, booksellers need all the help they can get to run as efficiently as possible.” 

The technology means less time in the back room and more time on the sales floor with customers, she said.

Greer said Ingram has worked hard to simplify the technology integration process, working with established standards and processes that can be adapted easily into POS technologies.

She said she hopes the ASN technology is just the beginning of the conversation with retailers. “We want retailers to be well informed about what’s available and we want to hear what else they need,” she sad. “Where can we help?”

See the full story in CBA's Retailers + Resources magazine.

Transformation and Relationship

After visiting with a number of Christian stores recently, a common theme runs through the
conversations: We’re doing everything right, but nothing’s happening.

Operating a business in today’s economy and technology-driven world is one of the most demanding challenges any person might take on. The traditional systems and processes may be honed to a razor’s edge, but they don’t seem to cut anymore. Something’s missing.

You’ve mastered your ordering cycle, but it seems that it doesn’t always align with our customers’ timing. You’re blogging, Facebooking and Tweeting, but birdseed isn’t paying the bills. What’s going on?

Retail has always been about trust. But today it seems to take more to gain that trust, and trust extends beyond just fair weights and measures. It’s about connecting on a heart level.

One of the saddest things I’ve heard when a retailer is in trouble is that there are no strong relationships with local church leadership. The store is thought of more like an adversary than a partner and not even considered.

Some of the barrier seems to be built on old-school marketing. It’s one-way messaging, not dialog and relationship. If the conversation only becomes price and item, we’ll lose in that context. However, if the conversation can move to ministry needs and common connection, this is where we can find alignment.

If you host a pastors’ breakfast as a marketing strategy, you might as well serve powdered eggs and cold toast. It’s like those boring time-share meals where you eat free in exchange for 90 minutes of commercial and a hard-sell pitch for dessert. If you host a pastors’ breakfast as a way to build relationship through your testimony of like mission and to hear from pastors about their needs, then even powdered eggs might become eggs Benedict. I might be stretching the analogy a bit, but the point is that one-way marketing and advertising aren’t going to build the trust you need at retail today.

Retailers generally are looking for ways to connect better with customers. However, while the metrics of impressions and exposures still may have value, it’s the ability to engage people on common ground and be a partner to help transform them into something they want or need to be that drives retail success.

In the church relationship, it must be about understanding a pastor’s needs and coming alongside in mission for the people you both serve. A good question to dialogue with a group of pastors is, “How can we win this city for Jesus? How can we collectively leverage what we have been entrusted with to change this community?” Just being a product supplier doesn’t work any more. Churches increasingly are decentralized with many decision-makers at larger churches, and both large and small churches face relentless cost pressures and time constraints. But they all have a need to build individual faith walks, to reach the lost, and help with the harvest without a lot of workers in the field.

The Christian store is an extension of the church in many ways. The obvious extension is the availability of many powerful resources that change lives. However, the value a store brings is matching those resources to specific needs, whether with and for the church or for Christians in general and then beyond to those who don’t currently profess a relationship. Your knowledge and expertise builds trust because you understand your customers’ needs and can select just the right resources to help them.

Your store also creates a sense of place, a location, and a destination that serves as a community hub where like-minded people can connect with each other. That might be a frontliner with expertise in a subject or product area, or other Christians who gather at your store to talk about local concerns in the church or in the community. Community builds trust in the sense of shared needs and passion, and enabling a customer to find a comfortable spot to fit or to engage in bigger-picture concerns, such as life transformations.

It’s very difficult to shift from the old one-way marketing delivery to a dialog and relationship. But when sales are down, a new brochure or a new ad won’t always be enough to generate the long-term relationship that sustains your community hub. In the new retail, especially for independent specialty stores like Christian stores, it’s about transformation and relationship, not about the purchase. The purchase comes as a result of the knowledge, trust, and engagement the store creates as added value, something that can’t be duplicated online or in a discount store. It’s not just about the cheapest transaction.

Knowing how to help your churches grow or fulfill their ministries will help you fulfill yours. Our help comes from the Lord, His joy is our strength, and our work is the fulfillment of His work. We’re in this together. 

Curtis Riskey
CBA, Association for Christian Retail
Executive Director