CBA Industry Blog

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

 

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 

Buying Local!

There has been a trend as of late for consumers to start shopping locally for products (mainly food items) sourced closer to home. The word “Locavore” was born which means “a person whose primary source of food is his or her local foodshed or from within a relatively modest radius.” Many people across the U.S. are looking to local producers to supply them with products that will also help them to sustain their local economy.

As many of you know, some Christian retailers have been struggling for years. In fact, their struggle is not unlike that of small family farmers in the 1980s. Big corporations moved in and squeezed out the little guy. In the struggle of Christian retailers, the corporations have been the Wal-Marts of the world. They started selling Christian product when it became popular and placed extreme margin pressure on small-business people trying to eke out a living.

A Changing Value Proposition

Greetings to the blog-world,
My name is Curtis Riskey and I am a fellow blogger on the new CBA Industry Blog. I haven’t written before now because I didn’t think I had much to add to the ongoing conversation. I also haven’t read too many blogs so I certainly don’t know how to write one. Part of my apprehension is to whom am I writing, and who would care?

I am a Christian retailer from Oshkosh, WI. I started a store there called BASIC which stands for “Brothers and Sisters in Christ.” It is a store that our customers seem to like a lot and we have been told that we have provided a necessary service in our community over the years.

I left our store in Wisconsin and moved to Colorado Springs recently to come to work at the Christian Booksellers Association. I did this because my heart had been breaking for Christian retailers who have been struggling for some time. You see, the competition for Christian products has increased over the years and the different ways to get those products has also exploded. The bottom line is that the value proposition has been changing. I guess I just wanted to do what I could to help fellow Christian stores grow.

I have met some of the most “salt of the earth” people in this industry. They have answered a call by Jesus to do something that takes tremendous personal sacrifice. They have started Christian retail stores not to get rich, but to truly serve others in their respective communities. They have tried to further His kingdom by providing books, music, and gifts to people so they may be encouraged and equipped to further His call on their own lives to reach out to the hurting people around them. It is truly a thankless job many times but other times it is rewarding beyond belief when you see lives changed for the better. Those rewards outweigh the costs and that is why many have continued down this path.

I mentioned that the value proposition has been changing and what I mean is this. For years a Christian store could be the place where people could find books, music, and gifts all centered on a specific worldview in one retail location. Now those books can be found many other places and the music also. Many gift items are tougher to find in other stores or online, but the competition still remains.

The million dollar question now is what is the value proposition for a Christian retail store today? Why do consumers continue to shop Christian retail stores? What can Christian retail stores do to attract more consumers? These are the questions that retailers are asking themselves everyday. I too would like to pose these questions to the blogosphere. If you are a consumer of Christian products, what can stores do to keep your business? If you are currently not a consumer of Christian products, what can a Christian retail store offer you that would be a reason for you to start coming?

Please respond, I would love to hear your ideas!