Stores, suppliers are ‘pleased’ despite the sluggish economy

 The 2010 Christmas season produced varied results for Christian retailers, publishers, distributors and suppliers. But they sounded upbeat despite a continuing sluggish economy, nearly double-digit unemployment and a snowstorm that impacted holiday sales. 

A blizzard in the Northeast postponed about $1 billion in holiday retail sales by keeping shoppers out of stores in the days after Christmas, according to mall-traffic tracker ShopperTrak. The National Retail Federation predicted sales would top $451 billion nationwide during the holiday season, close to equaling or exceeding 2007’s record year.

Many in the Christian industry were still gathering results in early January, but several contacted by Christian Retailing were optimistic about holiday returns.

Rolf Zettersten, senior vice president and publisher for FaithWords and Center Street, said that the Nashville divisions of Hachette Book Group had double-digit growth last year over 2009 in the Christian retail channel.

“We had an exceptional year, and this gave us a lot of confidence as we headed into the Christmas season,” he said. “We had great expectations for the holidays, and they delivered.”

FaithWords’ top titles were Power Thoughts by Joyce Meyer, The Coming Economic Armageddon by David Jeremiah, Without a Word by Jill Kelly and What Good Is God? by Philip Yancey.

At Tyndale House Publishers, Dave Endrody, vice president of sales, said that “the Christmas season’s results encouraged us.”

The season netted us sales that were “significantly above our targets, including our third best December in history,” he said. “While we didn’t match the highs of Christmas 2007, we were gratefully ahead in sales volume of the difficult 2008 Christmas season.”

Tyndale saw strong interest in the Beautiful Everyday Bible—released in January—which represents the publisher’s effort to support crisis pregnancy centers, Endrody added. Top sellers over the holidays were Drew Brees’ Coming Back Stronger, Joel C. Rosenberg’s The Twelfth Imam and Francine Rivers’ Her Mother’s Hope and Her Daughter’s Dream.

Tom Knight, Thomas Nelson’s senior vice president of Christian retail and ministry development group, said that the holiday season “was positive, with sales ranging from flat to up to low double digits.”

High hopes and expectations for the Christmas season were tempered by reduced traffic at many of retailers last fall, he said. “But we were encouraged to see a handful of our new releases like Bonhoeffer find a passionate audience.”

Other good sellers over the last two months of the year were Sarah Young’s Jesus Calling, Todd Burpo’s Heaven Is for Real and Max Lucado’s Outlive Your Life, Knight said.

Bill Westfall, vice president of sales at Barbour Publishing, said that the publisher had “very good” Christmas sales.

“This was in part due to the huge success we had with a few of our titles such as A Prairie Christmas Collection, Christmas Stories for Bedtime, The Twelve Days of Christmas Cookbook and our seasonal romance collections,” he said. “This resulted in an increase in sales volume compared to 2007-2009.

“Christmas fiction, especially historical fiction, seems to be very appealing to consumers due to the nostalgic feeling it tends to create,” Westfall added. “Our hopes were to have strong results with select titles, and I think that we did accomplish that goal.

Having seen Christmas sales up each of the past seven years, Kira Brant, owner of Kira’s Cottage Christian Gift and Book Store in Franklin, Ind., had “high hopes” going into the season. “I was a bit disappointed,” she said last month. “It’s definitely not the worst.

“But in the end I am thrilled that our store was up 17% for the year,” Brant added. “I also was happy that I didn’t have many specific Christmas items left after Christmas. I didn’t have to deep-discount too much. … So all in all, I am pleased.”

Skip Prichard, president and chief executive officer of Ingram Content Group—which includes Spring Arbor—said that Christmas sales for its Christian products distributor divisions “remained strong, in spite of a soft economy.”

“We added a large number of non-book items to our inventory such as Bible tabs, Bible covers, toys, games and church resources,” he said. “In addition to non-book items, we increased Vacation Bible School titles and inventories in direct response to customer demand. We enhanced our selection and depth of Christian music. Some notable successes were Steve Green’s Love Will Find a Way and Michael O’Brien’s Be Still My Soul.” 

At STL Distribution North America, Rick Regenfuss, vice president of sales and marketing, said that the distributor projected a flat Christmas season.

“The retailers I have talked to indicated sales are not following prior years’ patterns and seemed to be coming in later than in prior years,” he said. “Christmas sales ’09 was a 6% increase over ’08, but we’re running stronger than that before (this) Christmas.”

STL’s top sellers during the holidays were the Operation World prayer guide from Biblica, Summerside Press’ “Love Finds You” series and Franklin Electronic Bibles, Regenfuss added. 

Meanwhile, online sales—making up approximately 10% of all retail sales—were up 13% to a record $30.8 billion for the Nov. 1 to Dec. 26 holiday period, according to Internet-tracking firm comScore. 

Deeper Calling Media—an online retailing operation that handles the Web site for approximately 500 mostly Christian-owned stores—reported a 215% increase in December from 2009. Owner Bill Goodyear said he attributed the sales jump to improving online information on products as well as adding three staffers or “customer advocates,” who are “subject matter experts” in Christian books, Bibles and giftware.

“Our top 10 stores do 80% of all the sales over Christmas and the rest of the year,” said Goodyear, noting that top sellers were books, Bibles and Bible-based Christmas ornaments.