With the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) set to open in Denver next week, CBA President Bill Anderson has challenged retailers to focus on selling more Bibles.

Christian stores can “very easily double our Bible sales simply by serving the customers that are already coming into our store, have already decided to make a Bible purchase that day, have their checkbooks ready and yet they leave without buying,” Anderson said in a special pre-show audio message posted at the trade association's Web site.

Information to be presented at the convention's second SuperSession on Wednesday will contain fresh research from The Barna Group, sponsored by Nelson, Anderson said. “This is very important information to help us understand new ways that our customers are thinking as they come into our stores to buy Bibles.”

Also encouraging retailer attendance at the July 9-13 event, Anderson said it was important for stores to be there even if it is a financial stretch. “This year more than ever I believe it's critical for us as Christian retailers to come together and express our support for what we're doing, our commitment to what we're doing and to demonstrate-in bodily form, in mass numbers, to ourselves, to our competition and particularly to our suppliers-that we believe in our own future, that we believe the days of growth are not all behind us.”

Retailer attendance will show Christian retail is a “viable channel,” Anderson said, and “demonstrate that not only does the Christian retail channel sell more than all the other channels combined, we demonstrate a show of solidarity, of cooperation. … And we demonstrate that we have a conviction of the importance of retailing with excellence.”

More than 400 companies, including 76 first-time exhibitors, will occupy 1,140 booth spaces at the Colorado Convention Center. Last year's ICRS saw 9,986 attendees.

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