Church Supply Source serves retailers, while POD option aids publishers

Send The Light Distribution’s new Church Supply Source initiative will enable retailers to build church supply sales, while Ingram’s advances in color print-on-demand technology provides a high-speed solution for publishers around the world.

Aiming to help Christian retailers serve churches in their area, Send The Light developed the store-church program to help retailers identify and contact churches to keep them informed of the church supplies they carry.

“We hope to be able to give the stores new resources that will help them to easily approach area churches with information about their offerings,” said Karen Bilbrey, director of business development at Send The Light, which stocks more than 5,000 SKUs of church supply products.

A dedicated web page—Churchsupplies.stl-distribution.com—makes available to stores free downloadable flyers to customize and take on visits to churches. The site also will showcase monthly specials and resources such as advice on what product to carry and ideas and practices that are working for other stores.

“Retailers that I have met with were thrilled to have some assistance in these challenging times when many have had to cut back on staff due to budgets,” Bilbrey said.

Mark Phillips, vice president of sales and marketing at Send The Light, said the initiative is “geared to helping stores develop new business in an area they might not feel comfortable with striking out on their own.”

Feedback shows that stores are “increasing their sales with just a small amount of effort,” he said. “Church supplies is one genre that cannot lose ground due to being digitized, so developing that partnership between stores and area churches is a vital part of retailers being able to improve sales through this market.”

Send The Light, Anchor Distributors and Spring Arbor, part of Ingram Content Group, all now offer print-on-demand (POD) services. Ingram recently announced significant advances in color POD technology, allowing for a much greater range of color books to be quickly printed and distributed around the world.

“High-speed color inkjet printing is poised to be a real opportunity for publishers looking for more efficiency in book manufacturing and the print supply chain overall,” said Phil Ollila, Ingram’s chief content officer. “Through our new inkjet color option, publishers can use print-on-demand for a whole new range of titles.”

Ingram’s print-on-demand unit, Lightning Source, recently launched its new standard inkjet color book option for publishers. Promising that savings will be passed from Ingram to the publisher, POD books from Lightning Source are to be competitively priced.

O’Reilly Media has worked with Ingram to beta-test the distributor’s new color inkjet offering.

“I’ve seen the first editions off the press, and the quality is excellent,” said O’Reilly President Laura Baldwin. “In a changing market, Ingram’s new color POD gives us another option to bring more color books to more readers worldwide while simultaneously lowering our costs.”

Lightning Source is manufacturing color books using inkjet technology for publishers worldwide from its Tennessee location, complementing its current premium color offering. Plans are in place to expand the inkjet capability to its Pennsylvania location by the end of the year and internationally in early 2013, the company said.

Ingram has also made ordering easier for retailers. With a simplified search mechanism added earlier this year, the redesigned iPage is “more Amazon-like,” said Ingram Chief Commercial Officer Shawn Everson. ? It also is more customizable and has an extended title base.

Additonally, stores can now monitor the site to see where an order is in process, and in January, Ingram plans to institute a new tool to further simplify the ordering process.

• Prev
• Next