A difficult bold move

Dropping its winter expo was a painful decision for the Association for Christian Retail-but members will be better served in the end, says director of expositions Scott Graham.

By Regina McGee and Ashley Mayer

Sometimes doing the right thing hurts. Just ask Scott Graham, director of meetings and expositions for the Association for Christian Retail, or CBA. (The association retains the acronym of its former name, the Christian Booksellers Association.)

CBA underwent a strategic repositioning of its events when it dropped its winter expo last year and launched instead a small “solutions-oriented” conference that debuted in January.

“If you are looking at the financials, it would seem like a crazy decision to eliminate a revenue-generating event,” Graham says. “Our budget was dramatically affected as a result, and we did have a reduction in staff. But we’re doing the right thing, even if it costs us.”

CHANGING MARKET DYNAMICS
Based in Colorado Springs, CBA is a nonprofit trade association with deep roots. Formed in 1950 to represent the interests of Christian booksellers, the organization has grown to include more than 2,000 member stores selling everything from Bibles to music, videos, and apparel. CBA also has 570 associate member companies that are book publishers, record companies, and other product suppliers.

As the organization has grown in scope along with the Christian retail industry, so have the challenges that it has faced.

Sales of Christian products hit $4.3 billion in 2006, up from $4 billion in 2000, according to CBA research. Yet the tidal wave of consumer interest in Christian products has been a double-edge sword for CBA, whose core constituency-Christian retail stores-has seen increasing competition from “big box” mainstream competitors like Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble. The result: a rapidly declining number of Christian retail stores.

Attendance at CBA’s International Christian Retail Show dropped from a peak of about 14,000 in 1999 to 9,266 last year in Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center. The show, held every summer, is still the largest Christian retail expo in the country, with more than 115,000 net square feet of exhibition space in Atlanta. Attendance at the July 2008 show in Orlando is expected to top 10,000, and the exhibit area will be 120,000 net square feet,
according to Graham.

CBA’s smaller winter meeting and expo, CBA Advance, has also struggled with declining retailer participationWhen publishing giant Thomas Nelson announced last February that it would not be exhibiting at CBA’s winter expo but instead hosting a proprietary event for retailers (a three-day all-expense-paid Open House), it seemed to be another sign that the marketplace could not support two expositions a year.

In July, CBA announced that it was replacing its 2008 winter expo with a small conference.

REFINING A NEW APPROACH
The inaugural CBA Industry Conference was held at the Indianapolis Marriott, January 30-February 1. Registration for the event had been limited to 400. Although the 188-person attendance was smaller than expected, Graham says CBA remains committed to the concept of a meeting that focuses on providing retailers and product suppliers with solutions and tools for thriving in a changing marketplace.

The conference had no exhibition floor, but there was a meeting room where products were displayed, and several publishers presented merchandise in clubhouse suites.

“This is not an order-taking event,” Graham stresses. The purpose, he says, is to create an ongoing, collaborative dialogue focused on industry issues.

“The first night of the conference we hired a professional facilitator and really dove into the issues in the industry,” he says. As issues were identified, attendees were challenged to find ways to address them through the passion they have for their business. There were also different speakers and club rooms to encourage discussion.

At the orientation session, a 10-step strategy was presented to help attendees get the most out of the two-day experience, and keynote speakers attended the session in order to customize their presentations to make them as responsive to the needs of attendees as possible, Graham says.

Among the presenters at the conference: Bob Smith, president ofGemination, who was chosen by NBC News as the best small-business consultant in the United States. Pamela Danziger of Unity Marketing gave a session on “Shops that Pop,” identifying the elements that lead to a positive shopping experience. Steve Miller, of the strategic marketing firm The Adventure, spoke about unconventional marketing methods. James Russo, vice president of Retail Forward, presented research on what the retail environment will look like in the year 2015.

With a meat-and-potatoes focus like this, “Retailers will gain more substantial, tangible ideas and ways to improve their business, and same for the supplier side,” Graham says, adding that the conference is not just a one-time event. It is designed to be a process that will continue throughout the year, with a focus on exploring solutions and keeping dialogue going.

CBA has used Webinars as both pre- and post-conference tools. Pre-conference Webinars focused on answering questions members had about how this conference was different from the winter expo and offered perspectives from some of the key presenters. As a follow-up to the conference, CBA has offered several Webinars and a new blog written by staff to encourage online discussion.

REBRANDING: TAKING THE LONG VIEW
CBA is focusing on how to make next year’s conference better by asking for attendee feedback in evaluation surveys, as well as hiring consultants to help refine the event.

A shared location with other events in the same time frame, particularly with a sister group that focuses on international Christian trade, is being considered, as are different locations, including the Atlanta Gift Mart, according to Graham.

How will the switch to the conference affect the CBA’s brand in the long run? No one can be sure, but Graham says CBA is committed to listening to members’ issues and finding new ways to come up with solutions.

“The culture of CBA is about being responsive and creative when it comes to change,” he says. Moreover, he believes that specialty retail is coming back because the bigger chains don’t have the same level of customer service and do not have the same kind of relationships that CBA members are able to establish with customers.

“I think in the long run the new approach is very good,” Graham says. “We’re going to continue to listen to our members and stay connected.”

OPENING TO MIXED REVIEWS

Many CBA members were happy with the new conference, but some missed the expo format.

Don Smearsoll, who owns 21-year-old Bread of Life Christian Bookstore in Greenville, Ohio, says he got some good information out of the presentations at the CBA Industry Conference in January, but he wasn’t completely happy with the change. “We definitely missed the trade show,” Smearsoll says. He has been a CBA member for 21 years.

“The conference was helpful, but a lot of the information I felt like I already knew.” He prefers the trade show format and seeing products spread out.

Tammy Garner is the owner of The Master’s, a Parable Christian Store in Clovis, New Mexico. She was excited to attend this year’s conference and found it very helpful. “I thought the conference was very good. It was different, very interactive.”

She liked that the speakers had attendees get involved and she enjoyed having a back and forth with various publishers instead of having the publishers just try to sell products to her as they do at trade shows. “We were able to lay each of our own challenges or oppositions on the table,” she says. Garner says she will probably attend next year.
Beverly Channell and her daughter, Kelly Maigaard, are co-owners of Wellspring-Parable, a Christian retail store, in Des Moines, Iowa.

“The presentations were not new, but they were an opportunity to focus in on those principles and practicalities that are effective,” she says. “I would say that being at the conference was a great opportunity to hear from experts in their fields as well as leaders in the Christian industry.” Channell adds that “it’s easy to discuss, to talk, to brainstorm. The challenge is in the application, the putting it into practice.”

REPOSITIONING IS TOUGH

Francis Friedman, president of the consulting firm Time & Place Strategies Inc. in New York, is a longtime observer and analyst of the exposition industry. Friedman says the overall trend is for exhibitors and advertisers to get closer to their audience in a business setting. Sometimes this means getting them off the show floor.

The Entertainment Software Association, he points out, recently dropped its Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3Expo), a mainstay event for the electronic gaming industry that covered more than a million square feet of exhibition space. It had become dominated by several major players, Friedman says, and the association decided to drop the big show in favor of smaller business forums focusing on the needs of distributors and manufacturers.

Moves like this, says Friedman, signal that serving members sometimes involves doing a smaller event that focuses on business issues rather than order-taking.

“The decision to make this move is a structural one based on the event’s size and the business transactions that take place,” says Friedman. “It’s not an easy decision to make, and it does take courage to make it.”

There are several important things to remember when producing a meaningful show, Friedman advises. First, show organizers have to understand the economics behind the show-as well as the economics that govern the industry they
are serving.

Organizers also have to understand what buyers and sellers really need. And the best way to do that, he says, is through quantitative and qualitative market research.

Show organizers should also talk to different people to get a complete picture of what their audience really wants and needs. Once you know your audience, make sure you are providing something that they are willing to pay for.

“People want meaningful interaction,” he says. “They will pay for value, so make sure your events are value rich.”