c. 2000 Religion News Service
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. _ The $3 billion-a-year Christian retail industry, an enterprise built on words, must adjust to a new consumer society that identifies more with images, store owners and suppliers were told at a conference here March 24-25.
To sway shoppers under 30, retailers need to either invest in e-commerce or transform their stores into multifaceted showplaces not unlike Mall of America, according to one speaker at the CBA Future of the Industry 2000 conference.
The trade group was known as the Christian Booksellers Association until five years ago, when it adopted the acronym in a nod to the industry’s move beyond Bibles and books.
“What the printed page was for you and me, the screen is for them,” author Leonard Sweet told more than 200 industry officials in attendance. “The new stained-glass window is that screen. It’s an image culture.”
Though all sorts of retailers are seeking to cash in on the Internet explosion, the mood among Christian merchandisers is a bit more guarded. Several Web sites touting Christian goods have been launched in the past two years, but many are backed by established companies. Some sites are mostly for show, something a store can tell customers about but not taken seriously as a source of sales. To many in the industry, the bricks-and-mortar Christian store holds a niche as a place believers can come not only to shop but to bond.
“The Internet has tremendous opportunity,” said Bill Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Colorado Springs-based CBA. “The industry needs to assess that, embrace it and use it like 10 or 15 years ago when we were urging people to use direct mail and catalogs.”
A number of companies have heeded the call. Some have won the confidence of prominent investors. One site, iChristian.com, of Beaverton, Ore., is financed by Softbank Venture Capital, an Internet investment company that also has a stake in Web retailer buy.com and the financial investment site thestreet.com.
Another Christian site, iBelieve.com of Grand Rapids, Mich., is a subsidiary of Family Christian Stores, the country’s largest Christian retail chain. Chicago-based Madison Dearborn Partners is its chief investor.
In other cases, Christian companies are striking alliances with e-tailers. Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins and the world’s largest publisher of Bibles, joined with Amazon.com in February to create an “online Bible store.”
One study indicates that Christian e-tailers have some work to do. A survey by Barna Research Group, an evangelical Christian research firm in Ventura, Calif., found there are nearly 40 million committed, active Christians on the Web, but only 15 percent of them feel strongly about the Internet as a source for information about matters of faith.
The architects of iBelieve.com are trying to change that.
Despite the fact that it sells more than 70,000 products, the company plays down its function as a place to buy things. Allen Arnold, a vice president for the company, calls it a “Christian lifestyle Web site.” The site is driven not by commerce but by content, with between 150 and 170 new articles posted every week on subjects ranging from sex to finance.
“We really wanted a relationship with the consumer,” Arnold said. “We want to be a place where ideas could be exchanged.”
Like most Web-based stores, iBelieve.com isn’t turning a profit and doesn’t expect to “for the first few years,” Arnold said.
Anderson of CBA said Christian retailers haven’t embraced e-commerce as much as their secular counterparts. One reason may be that regulars at Christian stores like the fellowship that comes with shopping among like believers. A 1998 survey conducted for CBA by a marketing firm found that Christian store customers ranked “atmosphere” second only to selection in importance when asked about their shopping experience.
“Christians come back to a store just like they go back to a church: to find support for their beliefs,” said Skip Knapp, president of Riverside Distributors of Iowa Falls, Iowa, a Bible and book publisher that launched a joint online venture with retailers and publishers in 1998.
Sweet, dean of the theology school at Drew University in Madison, N.J., said retailers need to either get into e-commerce, which appeals to people in a hurry, or offer a shopping “experience” at their stores. He cited the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis, where an indoor roller coaster rumbles past department stores.
Sweet said Christian retailers must think of offering an experience that is “multisensory, paying attention to smell, taste, touch, that this is about the whole body. We have to literally come to our senses.”
Jim Seybert, vice president of marketing for the Parable Group, a San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based association of 300 independent Christian stores, said that doesn’t necessarily mean spending thousands on glitzy multimedia displays.
“I’ve seen people come into a store distraught, ask for a book about divorce, and it turns out her husband just filed for divorce,” Seybert said. “The clerk will go into a corner and pray with her. That doesn’t happen at Niketown. You don’t need a basketball court to provide an experience.”
AMB END GORSKI
