Selling to Churches:Cook Bows Out, Multnomah Launches

by Lori Smith, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/8/2006

Cook Communications Ministries has announced that it will discontinue its NexGen church sales program. Launched 18 months ago, the program allowed stores to service all the Cook church accounts in their area, giving the store a piece of each sale. Of the 50 stores who participated in the trial program, less than 10 were able to adequately handle church accounts. Company spokesperson Michele Tennesen said the problem with the stores "seemed to be a personnel or time issue. In the ones that were successful, it was often the store owner that was out there working with the churches."

While Cook is pulling back, Multnomah is moving forward with a similar program.Feeding the Fold, which operates online at www.feedingthefold.com, allows churches to order case quantities of Multnomah titles at a 30% discount. When they place an order, churches choose a local store to get credit for the sale. Each church receives a $3 downloadable coupon for Multnomah products at that local store, to be duplicated and distributed to church members. According to the Web site, the goal of the program is "to assist in partnering local churches with many local bookstores by making available biblical resources to the church body at a reduced cost."

While the two programs are similar, Feeding the Fold might bypass some of the problems NexGen encountered because stores aren't required to manage the program. Orders are placed online and stores automatically receive credit.(Stores not already signed up can register at www.feedingthefold.com/retailers.) On the other hand, online shopping makes price comparisons simple, which may divert some sales elsewhere. Even with a 30% discount for a case order, online retailers may be able to beat the price. (For example, RBL discovered the discounted $6.99 Feeding the Fold price for Randy Alcorn's The Treasure Principle couldn't beat Amazon's deeply discounted $4.00 price tag.)

Tennesen said, "One benefit Cook had is that we were able to give business to stores from what we already had. That's something nobody else can do. We turned over several million dollars worth of business to the stores." Multnomah executives were unavailable for comment, but church sales appear to be a growing market for Multnomah, albeit a small one.

Tennesen is hopeful about the future.She said stores that were successful with NexGen will be allowed to continue the program, and that the company is going back to the drawing board for new ideas. "Cook is very committed to working to bridge that gap [between churches and stores]. We see this as a time to back up and reevaluate. We are coming up with new plans, under our new president Chris Doornbos, but they're not at a place where we can publicly talk about them."