"Real Help for Your Business" is considerably larger than the theme for last month's International Christian Retail Show (ICRS). It's the driving vision of CBA's growing family of business solutions. These initiatives address the changing needs of our members and provide solutions that help our retailers more effectively compete in an ever increasingly competitive environment. 
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| INDUSTRY INSIGHTS: Real Help for Your Business |
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| Written by Staff |
| Monday, 17 August 2009 10:26 AM America/New_York |
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By Bill Anderson
CBA Connect officially launched at ICRS 2009. But through our "soft launch," we already have 650 retail students using the platform, with another 3,000-plus scheduled to come on in August. Two suppliers have already signed contracts and several others are now in the queue. Retailers need help Building Store Traffic Our plan includes four channel exclusives during 2009. Our first two have very successful proven track records. Retailers sold over 340,000 copies of the Bibles for the Troops, and well over 132,000 copies of Surviving Financial Meltdown. These two campaigns demonstrate the power of Christian retail working together. The Bibles for the Troops exclusive has now entered Phase II, with a goal of 600,000 copies sold and sent to the troops by Christmas. And, we introduced two more CBA channel exclusives at ICRS in July--partnering with NavPress on The Message Solo Pink, a special edition Bible for cancer patients and benefiting breast cancer research and awareness; the other exclusive is in partnership with Crossway, a Christmas promotion and evangelistic outreach package for churches through a special Bible initiative purchased through Christian retailers. Retailers need help Gaining New Customers Employing our store finder Christianstores.org, we use CBA channel exclusives to promote awareness and help new customers find our stores. Actual searches on the CBA store finder spiked 50% during the first Bibles for the Troops campaign--clearly demonstrating that CBA is definitely bringing new customers and driving sales for CBA member stores. Retailers need help Optimizing Sales CBA CROSS:SCAN--with 800-plus stores reporting P.O.S. data weekly--is the gold standard in our industry. Each Wednesday, participating stores receive six reports of the previous week's sales-in-the-aggregate across the channel for books, Bibles, music, videos, kids' products, and a summary of those five rolled together. Reports include a four-week historical view and the "CROSS:SCAN Velocity Index" which helps retailers prioritize purchasing. CROSS:SCAN enables retailers to quickly identify titles on the rise--and optimize their sales potential before the competition even becomes aware. CROSS: SCAN supports other CBA initiatives such as Custom Inventory Accelerator, Channel Exclusives, Bestseller Lists, and CBA advocacy. Retailers need help Maximizing Inventory Performance CBA Custom Inventory Accelerator was performance-proven in test stores in the fall of 2008. Each of the five stores using the tool experienced a 10%-plus sales growth. One $700,000 store had a 12.8% sales increase in books between August 2007 and August 2008, and a store-wide increase of 16%. Another store increased Bible sales 100% from September 2007 to September 2008. The program is now fully functioning and has capacity for approximately 85 participating stores at a time, and adding new stores each month. Thanks to a Tyndale scholarship, retailers pay only $100 up front and after achieving a 10% sales growth, pay the $395 balance out of their sales increases--paying it forward and perpetuating the scholarship so other retailers can benefit, too. Retailers need help understanding the motivators and changing needs of their customers CBA Consumer Intelligence is ongoing research involving 300,000 consumers polled weekly. CBA Consumer Intelligence deciphers the information for our industry and provides intelligence designed to help CBA retailers better understand and serve existing and new customers, improve marketing, and increase sales. Our new study, Know Thy Customer, segments 30,000 Christians into five categories reflecting their belief systems, and discerns their purchasing habits, leisure activities, favorite genres, and other information through lifestyle filters. More than research, this study helps pinpoint inventory and sales and marketing strategies to generate maximum sales and profitability. At CBA we recognize our industry is experiencing massive change. I encourage every retailer to take full advantage of CBA's advocacy and these business solutions--designed to provide real help for your store. The people of our industry are learning new ways of doing business--like channel exclusives, training via the Web, being more data-driven, working more closely in sharing data views, and truly partnering as an industry. CBA is using its unique position and is "Serving by Leading and Leading by Serving." Suppliers and retailers are applauding CBA as the one organization that can unite the industry, and for leveraging the size of our whole channel to do what only CBA can do-creating benefits that make it possible for every size retailer and type of supplier to use technology, data, information, and partnerships to grow their business, and enlarge the Kingdom. - Bill Anderson, President/CEO of CBA |
