Hundreds of stores in the Christian retail channel will begin electronically reporting weekly product sales data to CBA's new Christian Retail Official Sales Statistics (CROSS:SCAN) data service beginning Oct. 1. According to the trade association, CROSS:SCAN will create the first fully retailer-driven data-collection and management initiative for the whole channel.

CBA has received commitments from the Association of Logos Bookstores, Berean Christian Stores, Covenant Marketing Group, Lemstone Christian Stores, LifeWay Christian Stores and Mardel Christian & Education Supply, and has contracts in process with others, including Family Christian Stores and the Munce Group.

"CROSS:SCAN will provide retail intelligence for intelligent retailers who understand the value of combining their data with Christian stores nationwide to better understand and manage inventories, increase sales and be the best trading partners for suppliers," said CBA President Bill Anderson.

Sales data for books, Bibles, music, video and children's products will be collected by SKU every Monday from participating stores for the previous Sunday through Saturday. Participating stores will have secure access to the CROSS:SCAN reports on Wednesdays via the Internet, reflecting the previous week's sales across the country in Christian retail. Retailers will not have access to store-specific or group-specific information, but instead a fully aggregate picture that will show which products are moving quickly or have made significant jumps or declines in the previous week, which should better equip the retailers for inventory decision-making.

CBA will continue working with retail leaders to identify other Christian retail needs and report enhancements that CROSS:SCAN might provide. While initially the report will offer an aggregate picture by SKU that can be sorted in several ways, CBA may, with the expressed support of retail members and leaders, expand the breadth and sorts of data in the future. CBA is developing a contract to allow suppliers to have exclusive access to the aggregated sales data of their own products.

To sign up to submit data and receive reports from the data service, Christian stores will be able to download a copy of the contract from CBA's Web site, sign it and send it in. A $500 annual fee will be waived for CBA member stores. Independent stores that are members of groups such as Covenant, Logos, Munce, and Parable will need to sign a contract with CBA to have access to the CROSS:SCAN reports. CBA expects to have a sizable majority of Christian retail stores reporting by the end of 2005, making CBA CROSS:SCAN the largest Christian retail sales data available.

A full story will appear in the Nov. 14 issue of Christian Retailing.