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| Retail Focus: Mother's Day March 2009 |
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| Written by John Draper |
| Wednesday, 18 February 2009 09:41 AM America/New_York |
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Retailers interviewed by Christian Retailing agreed that Mother’s Day is a great time for selling frontlist as well as backlist books, gifts—including gift books, music boxes, trinket boxes, plaques, vases, hand lotion and jewelry—and greeting cards. Matt Nicholson, owner of Lakewood Christian Gift Center in Lakewood, Wash., ranks Mother’s Day as his second biggest sales season, and plans to create his own shrink-wrapped gift baskets this year. “We’ll handpick items that will be a good match for mothers, whatever we have at the time, I imagine,” Nicholson said. As a Munce Group store, Dightman’s Bible Book Center in Tacoma, Wash., has the benefit of a catalog full of Mother’s Day specials. Munce will be mailing more than 3 million catalogs and will provide stores with signage. Despite the advantage of being a marketing group member, owner Donna Dightman Baker isn’t resting on her laurels. For example, she purchased some close-out packages of discontinued items for mothers from P. Graham Dunn. Bryan Sapp, manager at Family Books & Gifts in North Highlands, Calif., plans to host a mother/daughter tea. He will advertise the event through customer e-mails, a mailed flier and a newspaper advertisement. Tickets for the event will be sold at $3 a piece. “Our events always do really well,” Sapp said. Gifts galore The reason Mother’s Day is so important for Christian retailers is simple: People love to get gifts for mom. “If you wanted a short version of trendy items for Mother’s Day, you can never go wrong with jewelry or picture frames,” said Tina Wohlgemuth, general manager of Servant Marketing, a Texas-based company. “It all depends on how much money the customer is wanting to spend.” In order to drive gift sales during the season, retailers might consider putting together a large display with all sorts of gifts and books for Mother’s Day. It should be placed front and center in the store, said Steve Mohler, vice president of marketing for Dicksons Gifts. “My wife likes to buy journals for her mother,” Mohler said. “If she goes to buy the journal and displayed next to the journals is a nice mug, more than likely that store will get additional cash register rings from her.” “Your display should offer a variety of price points as well,” said Sherry Morris, marketing manager for Carpentree. “Create something that gives consumers options.” Publisher strategy Most publishers focus on gift books during Mother’s Day, if they release any new products at all. Barbour Publishing is releasing two new products, with its A Celebration of Mothers ($9.97, March) by Helen Steiner Rice and Power Prayers for Women gift edition ($14.97, March) by Jackie M. Johnson. Few publishers are producing special books for Mother’s Day this year. For example, Beacon Hill Press won’t publish any books for mothers around Mother’s Day, although it did in 2008 with the release Quiet Moments for Moms by Joyce Williams and Quiet Moments for Grandmothers by Kay Marshall Strom. “It was more of a fluke,” said Barry Russell, Beacon Hill marketing manager, adding that the company’s strategy is “to develop resources that come alongside moms … on more than just the celebrated special days of the year.” Thomas Nelson didn’t wait to release the mom-friendly Robin McGraw title during Mother’s Day. Rather, What’s Age Got to Do With It? came out in December, with the publisher advertising the book in Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine and promoting it with a national radio campaign. The enterprising Christian retailer need not wait for special Mother’s Day titles to make hay in May. Last year, Sapp took the newly released God’s Master Plan for Your Life by Gloria Copeland (Putnam Adult) and created a Mother’s Day promotion around it. “The publisher didn’t link the book to moms, but we did,” he said. Creative marketing Retailers are keeping a keen eye on their marketing spending. The Friendship Bookstore in Burnham, Pa., runs daily ads on a secular radio station year-round. Because of the station’s format, during Mother’s Day the highlighted product must appeal to a general audience, said store manager Theil Kauffman. “You can’t measure radio exactly, but it works well for us,” he said. “People come into your store and say, ‘Where’s that book from the radio?’ ” The Potter’s House in Valdosta, Ga., takes a new media approach. The store has a Facebook account where new releases and promotions are posted for online viewing. “We post links so that viewers can hear or see clips of products we are promoting,” said Lee Andrews, store manager. “All of this is completely, 100% free. “For Mother’s Day, we will use Facebook to send blasts to our customers about featured products. We keep adding ‘fans’ of the page so that each blast is being automatically received by more people, and then those people can choose to ‘share this post’ with other friends who aren’t yet fans of our page.” Some stores are looking to connect with local churches to spur Mother’s Day sales. Kauffman holds an annual pastors’ breakfast and sends out a quarterly newsletter to those pastors. The spring issue will include Mother’s Day specials. Nicholson noted that whatever a store’s resources, initiative and inventiveness can go a long way toward success. “We are only limited by capital. We have all the rest,” he said. “This ingenuity all comes about not just through our own work, but through the blessings of the Holy Spirit. … It all comes from God with His will and the Holy Spirit’s help when you understand that the store does not really belong to anyone but to Him.”
Mother's Day Gifts Barbour Publishing
Power Prayers for Women gift edition by Jackie M. Johnson ($14.97, March) covers topics such as “My Emotions” and “My Home.” Brownlow Gifts Brownlow has unveiled several gift books, including the Carpentree
Zondervan
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