CBA retailing excellence honorees, on what works

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: How is the year going for you business-wise?

KUNTZ: Business here in Johnson City has not been good at all. We’re down considerably for the year, and July is not proving to be any better for us.

We are running about 9.5% unemployment here locally and that’s very high for us. It’s really impacting the store.

PHILLIPS: We are just very thankful that God has just seemed to really bless our store in the past couple of years. We can only just give Him the honor and the glory for that because of everything else going around us.

We also have a very high unemployment rate. But one thing I see as a positive and a negative in a lot of ways, too, several of the smaller Christian bookstores around our area have had to close, and people are willing to travel a little bit farther.

VALK: This has been an extremely tough year. Unemployment in this part of Michigan is in the top 15 at the moment.

But I feel a little bit like Lisa, that God is continuing to bless the work of our hands despite many of the negative factors going on.

We’re not discouraged, we are just trying to think differently and be proactive about keeping everything in line to just bring glory to God by just supplying the whole community with whatever products we need.

TAYLOR: I have had maybe one “up month.” ... I guess I am encouraged because as I have sought the Lord, I have seen Him guide me and give me creative ideas, and I have been praying for favor with vendors, and they have worked with me on markdowns or maybe (been) flexible on returns.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What changes have you noticed in consumers recently?

PHILLIPS: People are looking for things that are useful—not just something they can sit on a shelf, but things that they can actually use.

Also, they are looking for less expensive items they can give as a gift. We have really tried to find those little gift items between $10 and $20. ... People have really seemed to appreciate that, that we tried to find valuable things that they can afford.

VALK: The under-$15 gifts that can actually be used and reused, or enjoyed over and over, that’s kind of the sweet spot as far as sales here in our store.

KUNTZ: What we are seeing is (people being) much more selective in their shopping and really taking a look at what’s available.

In times past, when we would run a sale or we would put out a coupon, that coupon would be used to draw people to come into the store. They would do shopping and often there would be multiple items that they would purchase along with that one discounted item.

Now they are coming in with the coupon, and they are buying one discounted item. It’s harder to get multiple items in the basket, so to speak.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Lisa, your store was honored for innovation. Tell us something about that.

PHILLIPS: We have 10 really large windows across the front of our store. Oftentimes I’ll have posters made of different scenes and put Bible verses on them or selected product that we are featuring.

I just came up with this idea that, wouldn’t it be neat to have pictures of people, local people in our area, with some inspirational thought? So we found nice pictures of locals, like in a wedding picture or at a graduation or celebrating a new child. ... We had a photo shop here in the shopping center with us, so we went over there and went through some of their pictures, and we started contacting people to ask permission if we could use their pictures. It worked out really well for us.

We got a tremendous response; people love having their pictures up, and they bring all of their family members in to say, come and see.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Paul, your store was recognized for community outreach?

KUNTZ: We’ve been working with several Christian leaders or Christian groups in the community, working on really large festivals, secular festivals, and trying to have a Christian presence there.

One is (a festival and hot air balloon rally) where 100,000 people will come through. There is a tent venue called the Hope Tent, made up of about 25 other local ministries, and we are involved in that. It has now become the largest tent venue in the whole festival. I happen to be the emcee for the three days. I run three stages. ...

There is a lot of outreach for ministry and sharing the gospel and really offering hope to the people in our community.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: How does that benefit the store?

KUNTZ: What it does is create awareness. We often don’t see a lot of foot traffic coming back in, although we do hand out coupons and fliers and we do giveaways and all of that. We are just hoping that our presence is known.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Marie, your store was honored for its church connections—why that emphasis for you?

PRICKETT: We started this because we saw it was a better way to get people involved and to involve them with their churches with us. We have a church resource specialist that works for us that people can call her direct and get information and work with them for curriculum and things like that.

One of the things that we rely on heavily is that our churches are involving us in their endeavors, like the Christmas shoe boxes (project). The last two years, we’ve noticed that people don’t have a lot of time, and so what we’ve done is created shoe boxes for people and we sell them in the store. They have all the toys, the toiletries and all of these things in them that make it nice for people that either can’t get about or who don’t have the time.

We also have an area where they can build their own shoe box, and we provide all of those items and then they put whatever they want in it and then we sell it like that.

VALK: In the four years of having this store, I’ve done a pastors’ event every October ... almost like an open house, so that when they come in, I can spend 20 minutes talking with one or two pastors together. That relationship-building doesn’t necessarily bring in all their churches’ business, but it puts us on their radar. It’s taken a period of time, but I have had more commitment from them to at least be coming in on a frequent basis and buying things for themselves. I understand a couple of them say, “I got this book” and name my store right from the pulpit.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Trisha, your store was noted for the way you study traffic flow and change things up?

TAYLOR: My floor manager, that’s really her forté. I have two full-timers and two very part-timers, and I get to know the people and when I see their strengths, I just kind of set them loose and just keep giving them guidelines and encouragement.

She has eliminated displays and opened up more walk space because we are a small store, probably 2,500 to 3,000 square feet. Every major event, she makes displays.

We have an Air Force base in Cheyenne and we created a military section, and every section in the store has been refined, moved, re-addressed. Now she is taking a large revolving display, and she makes her own signage on the computer. We have something that says military and professional careers.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Marie, how does your store emphasize “customer experience”?

PRICKETT: My husband and I are both extremely focused on how people prefer to be treated. We all like to be treated with respect ... but we noticed in other stores, not necessarily Christian stores, that there was an element missing—and that was to be treating people better than what they expected; try to give them a little more of a value for what they are coming in for so that they feel that they want to come back. That kind of developed our whole attitude in the store.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Where do you get your ideas from?

KUNTZ: Often I wake up at 3 a.m. and I have an idea that just comes. ... I don’t know where it comes from.

It’s just trying to be aware of what’s going on around you. I never go shopping (for products) without trying to figure out how am I going to display it, and how will it sell? If I can’t figure it out then and there, then I usually don’t buy the product.

VALK: I just came in last Monday morning and said, “As I was laying in bed last night, I thought of … ,” and the girls kind of rolled their eyes, and before they knew it, they were building a display and moving this and that. And they said, “Boy, we hope you don’t dream tonight,” when they went home because they were exhausted.

PHILLIPS: From various sources. I love reading Christian Retailing and I get some great ideas in there. I get a lot of good information from Parable. ...

A lot of times it’s just that thought in the middle of the night that God’s prompting me, “This is an idea.”

TAYLOR: My ideas are definitely from prayer. I’m on the prayer team. We were at our church and we were having our monthly prayer session, and I was on my knees crying out to God and I (prayed about) my clearance section—it is getting too big and it grieved me because it was too good of stuff to just box it up and give it to Goodwill, and marking it down further didn’t seem to work.

And God told me, “Gleaning Store,” so at the back of our store, we now have a gleaning store, from the book of Ruth in the Bible.

It is everything that has already been marked down and didn’t sell after being in our clearance section, and there is a love-offering box, and if they can give, then we appreciate it, and if they can’t, it’s theirs nevertheless, and we just ask for them to bring it up to the counter so we can take it out of inventory and keep track of it. People are so appreciative. They just love it.

PRICKETT: I am similar to the waking up in the middle of the night—in the car on the way to church. What happens is we are all in the stores so much that you don’t have that get-away-to-think time, so when you are away, you start thinking about things.

I am one who tries to keep in contact with the trade magazines. I am always anxious to read Christian Retailing and Inspirational Gift Trends just to see what’s out there and if I am missing anything.

I will take a catalog and look through a catalog, and oftentimes there are really great display ideas. I try to do it in the morning when I’m fresh so I don’t have anything else hogging my brain.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: How have exclusives worked for you?

VALK: It totally depends on what the item is. The Bibles we did for the military were fabulous. I was so happy to see it wasn’t something they could do at Wal-Mart. Things like that are very valuable and very special to us.

We’ve had some good sales with some Parable-exclusive items like Christmas CDs, and that type of thing holds well.

KUNTZ: We are selective on how it works. Having a CD or DVD package that may be slightly different than what is in the general market doesn’t really pull for us. There is really no advantage to that kind of exclusive.

But one of the things that worked was the ESV door hanger (New Testament Christmas outreach) by Crossway—that was huge for us because I caught the vision. It fit our ministry and our need to do ministry in the community. I was able to get churches involved and it was just huge.

PHILLIPS: We have a center for performing arts that is very close to our store, and they have brought in a lot of Christian concerts and shows.

At first we just offered to sell tickets here in the store for them because so many of our customers were wanting to be able to do that. It became such a commodity, everybody was wanting to buy tickets here at the store ... we actually worked out a partnership with the theater, and now we get a commission on all the ticket sales.

So not only are we bringing in a lot of people who would not normally come into our store because they come in to buy secular tickets, but we are also making quite a bit of commission off of it, so it has been a win-win situation for us.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What else has worked for you?

PHILLIPS: We did something that Parable had recommended and it was called Our Gift to You, Your Gift to the Church.

Basically,  we took a week and we informed our churches that for that week (and we handed out flyers for two or three weeks before and sent them to the churches), anyone that came in from their church with their church bulletin would get 10% off their entire purchase and at the end of that week we would add up all the receipts and send 10% of everything that was sold back to the churches for whatever ministry, fundraising event.

I was amazed at how receptive everyone was to that and how many churches put the slip in their bulletin and announced this. We didn’t have a tremendous amount of those come back in but it was still success because we were getting our store exposed directly into our churches which is our target market all over the county. Then I just had a pastor call me this past week and he wants to set up something similar. So they will be advertising our store all over the area too, to send people in to support their cause.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: In all the busyness, how do you keep the ministry focus and keep encouraged?

PRICKETT: We make a point to do an advent devotion. Not that we don’t pray every day, but during that time we know how easily it is to lose track of what we are here for and why we are here, so we have an advent devotion every morning.

Our church specialist and I work most days together, and we’ll do them in the morning and we’ll pray for the people that come in.

PHILLIPS: We also have a devotional every morning. Part of what we do is we meet with customers during the day and they have prayer needs, and we keep a log of those and we will pray for them during that time, if we haven’t prayed individually with them. Then we’ll follow that up with a card to tell them that they have been prayed for. ...

We kind of see each customer that walks in as a divine appointment. We don’t just see them as a customer coming in there to buy something. We are there to try to really meet that spiritual need, and it’s very common for us to stop and pray with a customer or take the time to listen if they want to share a burden they are carrying. We’ve had a chance to lead a few to Christ.

I think that’s one of the things that God is really honoring in our store is that we are trying to keep it as a mission field.

VALK: Praying with people, having our Bibles right by our cash registers, so that is the focus and the eye-catching thing—that’s why we are here and that’s what we do.

I like to listen to music, so just keeping Christian music on in the background, you find yourself just humming along as you do your work every day.

KUNTZ: After running all the financial reports daily and looking at what is happening, (it is about) coming to the realization that this is not my store. It’s not anyone’s store individually, it really belongs to the Lord.

As we look at our store here and the community that we are serving, there is no earthly, business, logical reason for us to be here the size that we are.

But we believe that our founder was faithful to what God called him to do, and that it is our job to remain faithful in that calling and that He will bless. So we keep our eyes focused on Him, that He will get us through this rough bump in the road.

We just need to be faithful to what He’s called us to do and He’ll supply. We are confident of that.