Having spent hours sharing issues and ideas from their stores at The Gathering in Louisville, Ky., earlier this year, Martha Brangenberg, Donna Duckhorn and Rachel Savage agreed it would be helpful not only to hear about the other operations but also to see them in action.

Their late-night talks while rooming together at The Gathering have led to an informal small group that sees them in regular contact and visiting each others' stores to offer and receive hands-on help and encouragement.

The first on-site get-together took Brangenberg and Savage to Duckhorn's store at Northland: A Church Distributed in Longwood. The trio spent nine hours—"a long day, but very energizing," Duckhorn said. "We all have Bookstore Manager, so it was great to stand at a station and ask questions and follow through right there to try and learn new things that the P.O.S. can do. We could have talked and trained all day on the P.O.S. and never have exhausted our questions," she added.

"We moved shelves, put up signage, reworked our card area. They helped me set up DaySpring cards in the system the way they were designed to be," Duckhorn said.

Read more about the trio's "Swap Shop" friendship in the October issue of Christian Retailing magazine.

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