A nationwide effort to drive traffic to Christian retail stores will take place Oct. 23 when retailers and suppliers unite for Christian Store Day.

The initiative was announced by CBA Executive Director Curtis Riskey, who spoke yesterday to publishers at the ECPA Executive Leadership Summit in Nashville. The effort was intended "to raise awareness and drive traffic to Christian retail," he said, replicating the success of Record Store Days that had seen "great success" in drawing consumers to music retailers.

Riskey told Christian Retailing that the event, featuring special promotions and in-store happenings, would be part of a weeklong campaign, with more details to be announced next month at the International Christian Retail Show in St. Louis.

During his summit session interview with ECPA President and CEO Mark Kuyper, Riskey said that Christian Store Day aimed to build on the successful Christian retail channel exclusives that CBA had developed with suppliers, which had averaged sales of more than 100,000 units of products special to Christian stores.

Urging greater cooperation between retailers and publishers, Riskey said: "We are not the only channel. We realize that you have many choices to make in terms of distribution. However, we have customers that are unique that do look to us for certain kinds of things. We have to figure out, how are we going to leverage that?"

Discussing changes and challenges in the industry with Kuyper, Riskey said that Christian stores needed to do a better job of connecting with local churches and to become centers of their local community. He estimated that there were between 2,500 and 2,800 viable Christian stores-including independents, chains and church-based operations. While some stores had closed in recent times, others were seeing double-digit increases, Riskey added.