A former Bookstore Manager of the Year has become the latest veteran Christian retailer to announce his store's closure.

Jay Weygandt's Logos Bookstore in Springfield, Ohio, will start a retail closing down sale Dec. 26, and shut for good in late January after selling fixtures and equipment. The store has served the community for 32 years.

Weygandt said he had decided to close the 6,000-square-foot store "after six years of declining sales and accumulated losses eating away our equity." He cited Internet and big-box competition and the Christian industry's failure to respond quickly enough to the challenges of the new market.

Though a redesigned Christian retail channel will survive, he said, "progress has been too slow to save my store." Weygandt was a former president of the Association of Logos Bookstores, and received the Jim Carlson Bookstore Manager of the Year Award in 2002. He was also a member of Christian Retailing's editorial advisory board and a former retail trainer for the American Booksellers Association.

Other long-term Christian retail independents who have left the industry this year include Gary and Margie Woehrmann of Grapevine Books in Houston; Sherry Litza of New Covenant Christian Supply in LaPorte, Ind., former CBA chairman Chris Childers of Macon Christian Store in Macon, Ga.; Wayne Pence of Living Water Christian Store in Kokomo, Ind., and Ray Lodien of Christian Book Supply in Kalispell, Mont.

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