CBA Winter Show Continues Decline

by Lynn Garrett with reporting by Jana Riess, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 2/5/2007

Attendance at last week’s CBA Advance—the winter meeting of the association of evangelical Christian retailers—was down from the previous year, and the future direction of the gathering will continue to be reviewed. “Our attendance was not what we wanted it to be,” said CBA president Bill Anderson. “Not enough people came. I don’t know how much of that was the change in schedule or the weather, but that’s part of what we’re going to assess in the next few days.” (This year CBA flipped the schedule, with its Future of the Industry conference kicking off the week on Monday and exhibit floor opening on Tuesday.)

Attendance at the trade show portion, CBA Expo, has been trending downward over the past five years (final numbers for 2007 have not yet been released). Asked about CBA’s determination to keep the winter show going, Anderson said, “If the retailers tell us they don’t want it, we’ll end it. But they haven’t done that.” One retailer who spoke with PW—Becky Gorzycka of the Logos Bookstore Association—said, “I hope it doesn’t go away. We need this show, for restocking after Christmas and for spring products. I find it very valuable.”

Exhibitor numbers have also been falling steadily over the past four years, from 274 in 2002 to 191 this year. There is rampant grumbling among publishers about the necessity for two annual trade shows. One industry insider who spoke off the record said, “If one of the major publishers breaks ranks and doesn’t come, there’s going to be a mass exodus.”

Off the floor, at the Future of the Industry meeting, CBA unveiled More from the Core, a new initiative Anderson called “a fresh look at the ecosystem that our members live and operate in. We identified 150 issues and narrowed it to 10 and then to four fundamentals,” which include identifying core customers and focusing marketing efforts on them; encouraging supplier members to develop channel management strategies that support Christian retailers; training and developing staff; and expanding supply-chain and inventory management technologies to squeeze out costs and boost sales. Anderson said that in the past year CBA had launched a consulting service “to help our members understand their financials, core inventory, category movement, what’s selling and what’s not. They’re getting some hands-on help.”

For a full report on CBA Advance, including final show stats, see the February 12 issue of PW.