June 2006
Reinventing a 55-year-old show
The CBA International Convention is born again as the International Christian Retail Show

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor

Sales of Christian products hit $4.3 billion in 2004, up from $4 billion in 2000. Not coincidentally, that year also marked the 54th (and last) Annual CBA International Convention. The Christian Booksellers Association (www.cbaonline.org) laid to rest a tired show and resurrected its reputation with the International Christian Retail Show 2005, July 10–14 in Denver.

“We didn’t want to rename the show just to have a different name on an old event. We had to deliver on the new name,” says Scott Graham, Meetings and Expositions Director for the Colorado Springs, CO-based association, which serves 2,300 retailers and 600 wholesalers worldwide.

In 2003, CBA realized change was inevitable when attendance dipped 17 percent to 10,902 registrants, and exhibiting companies dwindled from 496 to 477, with many taking less space. Competition with big-box retailers and mass merchandisers was putting pressure on independent Christian stores, which once owned a 62 percent market share.

With that share eroding at an average annual rate of 2 percent, members needed help. In 2001, CBA had divided the exhibit hall into four categories — books and bibles, music, gifts, and retail support — making shopping easier for the buyers who spend an average of 21 hours on the floor. But it also created problems.

“Publishers and music companies wanted shorter show hours. Gift companies wanted longer show hours,” Graham says. “Our biggest challenge was how to meet the needs of all these groups.”

CBA brought in Steve Miller of The Adventure (www.theadventure.com), Federal Way, WA, to lead the “convention reinvention committee.” Numerous surveys of members and nonmembers revealed conflicting priorities. Some favored canceling the smaller winter expo, citing high costs and too little return; others advocated to keep it. Miller helped sort out their differences.

After briefly considering consolidating the two events in one annual meeting, CBA decided to refocus the winter meeting on high-level strategy and reinvent the summer meeting as the buying event.

The plan made dramatic changes:

New name. They discarded the out-dated acronym. “Booksellers is an old term,” graham says. “Now you say retailer because the stores no longer just sell books. More than half the show floor is other stuff.”

New logo and tagline. A shopping bag in bright colors branded the show as a buying event with the theme, “Success in Store.”

Five-day schedule. Starting with a Sunday-night worship instead of a Saturday-night concert eliminated a day.

Flexible exhibit hours. Opening for appointments from 8–10 a.m. and closing at 5:30 p.m., but leaving doors open until 6:30 p.m., gave exhibitors 29–36 hours to do business.

Hub-and-spokes layout. Diagonal aisles radiated from “Show Central,” with a new product showcase, information desk and members-only lounge.

Solution Centers. At the tips of the spokes, four hands-on demonstration areas featured movies and media, scrapbooking, merchandising, and a skateboard park with products for 20-somethings.

Themed events. Instead of vendor-nominated authors and artists controlling programming, CBA took charge. “Now we have a purpose for each and every event,” Graham says.

Despite moving from the Bible Belt, where drive-in attendance helped the last two shows, the Denver show drew about 9,986 people. The 410 exhibiting companies included 89 first-time exhibitors.