Retailers trade association also to recognize ‘as many stores as possible’ with new ‘Excellence’ awards

CBA has launched two new initiatives intended to help member stores compete more effectively with other retail channels. Meanwhile, the trade association has announced a new award to recognize stores for their innovative and excellent efforts

CBA Connect will give retailers online access to training and support resources while CBA Consumer Intelligence will help them understand their customers better.

Parable Christian Stores is the first retailer group to join the CBA Connect platform, which rolled out last month. The online platform will bring together all CBA’s training programs and enable users to interact with one another, swapping information, according to a report in CBA’s January Retailers+Resources magazine.
The service is “an integrated information and marketing tool that helps retailer-and-supplier training partners communicate more effectively, and helps stores place more products into customers’ hands,” the article said.

“We decided to partner with CBA in order to streamline our efforts rather than using multiple training (Web) sites,” Parable’s Family Entertainment and Online Merchandiser Randy Ross told Christian Retailing. “This collaborative effort allows vendors to work with CBA as a single contact for product training disbursement, and allows Parable to focus training on our material rather than general product info. This partnership is a win for CBA, Parable, and most importantly, to the local store.”

Meanwhile, CBA Consumer Intelligence, an alliance with R.R. Bowker, will “dramatically change the way the industry responds to consumer tastes and preferences through merchandizing, marketing and product development,” the CBA magazine said.

Drawing from information gathered regularly from around 300,000 consumers, the service will report on consumers’ spending habits and decisions according to their designation in different Christian groups, from “active” through “professing” to “cultural.”

The data will help retailers improve their category management, and help identify “new selling opportunities … track performance against competition, and monitor market share by category, channel or publisher.”

CBA also recently launched Custom Inventory Accelerator (CIA), which equips stores to refine their inventory mix for maximum profitability by matching its in-stock data with CBA’s CROSS:SCAN sales data.

CBA said one store in the field test reported a 12.8% sales increase in book sales and 16% in overall sales in August compared to August 2007 after using CIA to identify high-performing inventory not previously stocked. Another store more than doubled Bible sales in September using the tool.

CBA also recently announced its new  Spirit of Excellence Awards. On a monthly basis from January until May, CBA will award stores for their innovative and excellent efforts.

“Unlike previous Store of the Year awards, the new CBA Spirit of Excellence Awards are designed to acknowledge not just one store every year, but as many stores as possible that are conducting exceptional retail practices and obtaining winning, measurable results,” CBA said. “We want the entire industry to know the creative, unique and new things retailers are doing to be successful.”

At the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) in Denver this summer, all stores that have won awards during the first half of the year will be eligible for the Jim Carlson CBA Spirit of Excellence grand prize award.