Cortez writes “As corporate America gleefully plunges into the lucrative religious market, its the sacrificial demise of small Christian bookstores:
Business Week says:
“No one has taken a more aggressive approach than Wal-Mart. In the early 1990s, it “carried only two Christian books and two Bibles on a lower shelf in the social stationery department,” recalls Ron Land, senior vice-president of mass-market sales for Thomas Nelson, who has been working with Wal-Mart for some 15 years.
Read more in the continuation…
Cortez writes “As corporate America gleefully plunges into the lucrative religious market, its the sacrificial demise of small Christian bookstores:
Business Week says:
“No one has taken a more aggressive approach than Wal-Mart. In the early 1990s, it “carried only two Christian books and two Bibles on a lower shelf in the social stationery department,” recalls Ron Land, senior vice-president of mass-market sales for Thomas Nelson, who has been working with Wal-Mart for some 15 years.
Read more in the continuation…SQUEEZED OUT. But after Land helped convince the nation’s largest retailer it was missing a major market, the chain began a big expansion. Today, Christian books represent up to 20% of its book business, and Christian merchandise [including music] has been one of its fastest-growing categories,” he says. Similarly, Barnes& Noble, Target, and many other retailers have also been devoting far more space to Christian media.
And that’s created tough sailing for many Christian stores. “Our industry has been going through the perfect storm,” says Mark Scott, president of LifeWay Christian Stores, a chain of 123 outlets owned by the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s not just that Christian stores face far more competition. They’ve also had to trim margins to compete with retailers like Wal-Mart. In the resulting shakeout, some 1,000 Christian bookstores have closed their doors in recent years. Still, the Christian Booksellers Assn.’s Anderson argues that the surviving Christian bookstores can still prosper. “General retailers want to cherrypick, while we offer the full orchard,” he argues. “
bookstores
I’ve been watching Christian book stores come and go for years–long before I ever stepped foot in a Wal-Mart. The bookstore chains were putting the little guy out of business long before the megastores were. I remember looking into a Christian bookstore franchise about 25 years ago, and I think the cost was something like $70,000 upfront. I also see Christian book racks in CVS, gas stations, restaurant chains and super markets.
You name the niche, and the big stores have them too.