Slimmed-down association calls its change of venue for annual showcase event ‘a bold step’

Calling the move “a bold step,” the threatened Gospel Music Association (GMA) is to move the 42nd Annual Dove Awards to Atlanta next year—the first time the show will take place outside Nashville. 

GMA announced in late July that the Dove Awards would be held in Atlanta’s historic Fox Theatre on April 20, 2011.

“Atlanta, like Nashville, is home to many gospel music artists as well as churches who support the artists and the music,” Ed Leonard, GMA board chairman and Daywind Music Group president, told Christian Retailing. “Nashville is the home of the GMA.”

The association continued to “love and support” Music City with its Immerse event in July, he said, point out that several components of Gospel Music Week, typically held in conjunction with the Dove Awards, were held at Immerse.

Leonard, who noted that GMA had not yet made a decision about the location for the 2012 Dove Awards, would not comment on whether the switch to Atlanta was related to the association’s financial challenges.

The Doves’ move follows a contract renewal with Atlanta-based Gospel Music Channel (GMC), which has broadcast the Dove Awards for the past three years. Bands and artists such as Casting Crowns, Chris Tomlin and Third Day—many of this year’s award winners—are also based in Atlanta.

GMA has faced a year of changes due in large part to declining membership, which forced the association to cut its staff of 18 to three in a series of layoffs in 2009. Last September, John Styll—who had served as the organization’s president and CEO for six years—also stepped down as part of a cost-cutting effort to keep the group alive, although he remains a board member.

During this year’s Dove Awards—held in April in Nashville—GMA scrapped its traditional weeklong series of events at Gospel Music Week that culminated with the awards ceremony, due to a lack of corporate sponsors and other factors.

Leonard said there will “likely be a shorter, more impactful conference that takes place in conjunction with the Dove Awards” next year. “We are working out the details of this currently,” he added. “I envision a summit-like conference, with keynote speeches about the state of all facets of the industry.”

Leonard—who began a series of fund-raising efforts last year to “reset” the organization and relieve past debt, including an $800,000 shortfall incurred from a past Dove Awards sponsor dropout—said GMA was “headed in the right direction.”

“Our financial situation is dramatically improved from last year due to overwhelming support of the industry and our vendor partners,” he said. “While we are not out of the woods, our compass is leading us in the right direction.

“We had a great Dove Awards this year, and Immerse promises to provide artists, songwriters and industry professionals great training and exposure for their craft,” Leonard added. “These great events, along with our conversion to a more volunteer-driven organization and greater emphasis on our members and their needs, have us headed in the right direction.”

He said there was “no co-location of events planned” with CBA. “But discussions are ongoing, and we are firmly behind Christian Store Day this year along with the Christian Music Trade Association,” Leonard said. “GMA will continue to be the go-to place for information about gospel music, networking opportunities for those involved in it and the hub of celebration and promotion of our artists and God’s music—both to the church and the world.”

Founder Chuck Wallington optimistic for others, while facing ongoing personal challenges

The marketing group for top-tier independent Christian stores is looking to expand its membership in anticipation of a strong final quarter of the year.

Usually promoting its services simply by word of mouth, the Covenant Group recently advertised its programs—aimed at stores with $1 million-plus in revenues—to boost numbers.

President Chuck Wallington—who founded the group 25 years ago from his Christian Supply store in Spartanburg, S.C.—said that membership had dropped recently with the sale of two multi-outlet businesses to chains.

But with signs of a good fall for retail, he wanted to recruit some of the “good strong stores” in the industry that might benefit from Covenant’s catalog and other services, especially those in the $750,000-plus annual sales range for whom an affiliate program had been introduced a few years ago.

“At that level we are not going to be their most economical resource,” but may be a good choice for stores that wanted to “raise their level.”

“The industry has changed a lot and quite a number of my friends have transitioned out—the guard has changed somewhat,” Wallington said. “It’s just a good time to restock the pond, so to speak.” With 16 dealer members representing around 40 storefronts, “we would like to get back up to about 50,” Wallington said.

Despite his optimism for retailing in general, Wallington acknowledged that his landmark store may never recover from years of theft by a former staff member recently jailed for the long-term fraud.

The president of family-run Christian Supply said that he was “satisfied” with the 30-month prison term given in May to Cheri Abraham, the former director of administration at the business.

She was also given five years of probation on release and ordered to pay $500,000 restitution, The Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported. Abraham said she had repaid the money she took, though prosecutors believed that up to $1 million was missing, the newspaper added.

In a message to suppliers who have worked with the store as it has sought to pay off debts, Wallington said that he was pleased that the judge had affirmed the store’s position in his sentencing remarks, saying that Abraham was “obviously in denial” about the missing money.

With the support of vendor partners and backing of a loyal staff, the business was digging out of the “very deep hole” discovered in August 2008, Wallington said.

While he was encouraged that God “is not through with our company’s ministry,” Wallington said, the losses had been crippling, forcing the store to cut staff by a fifth and to freeze salaries. “Indeed, with today’s economy and retail climate, there even still remains the possibility that recovery might never be attained,” he said.

Founded by Wallington’s father in 1953, the almost-35,000-square-foot store won a CBA Store of the Year Impact Award in 2007 for effective marketing, staff training and merchandising.

Curtis Riskey cites long-distance management challenges in ‘tough’ decision

CBA Executive Director Curtis Riskey has shuttered his own store four months after taking on the leadership of the retailers association.

The difficulties in running the business from a distance—BASIC (Brothers and Sisters in Christ) Books and Cafe was in Oshkosh, Wis., while Riskey is based in Colorado Springs, Colo., where CBA is headquartered—were cited for the decision, announced in July.

Riskey said the 10-year-old store closed “with grace and dignity by meeting all financial obligations and without filing bankruptcy.” Remaining inventory at the 12,000-square-foot store was liquidated.

The decision was “one of the toughest things emotionally I’ve ever gone through,” Riskey said. “A church was birthed in our store, couples had their first dates in the cafe and we’ve had marriage proposals there, but all this pales in comparison to the people who came to know Jesus within our walls.”

Riskey moved to Colorado in 2007, when he joined CBA as strategic solutions executive. He was named executive director in March, replacing longtime President and CEO Bill Anderson in a new leadership structure at the organization.

Riskey said the outpouring of support that had followed the announcement of the closure made him “more committed than ever to helping stores grow.”

Although it had been a personal sacrifice to take on his duties at CBA while still operating a store and to assume greater association responsibilities with the recent change in the association’s leadership, Riskey said he did not regret the decisions.

“Does closing my store signal there’s no hope for Christian stores?” he asked. “No, there is hope for Christian stores. But stores will be different. They will connect even more with their local churches and communities.”

Riskey and his wife, Barbara, had discussed selling the store before he joined the staff of CBA, but no offers were made so they had decided to continue operations “knowing the transition could be difficult,” he said.

In an open letter to customers thanking them for their past support, Barbara Riskey wrote that the need to close the store was “a decision made for us as clearly as the decision was to start BASIC. We have no more ability to keep it open than we had ability to ignore the call to open it in the first place.”

Through the years, the couple had “experienced great joys, and more challenges than you can probably even fathom, unless you too have elected not to live a ‘safe’ life. It has been rich and full and demanding and rewarding.”

Court battle for royalties divides men behind ‘experiment’

An unhappy epilogue is being written to the unlikely success story behind the book that shook up the Christian publishing world.

The three men who joined forces to publish The Shack when no one else wanted to—going on to see the novel sell more than 12 million copies in three years—are now in a legal fight about the book’s profits.

Author William P. Young has filed a suit against Brad Cummings and Wayne Jacobsen—who helped him rework his original manuscript and founded Windblown Media to publish the book under their start-up imprint.

The pair has countersued, while Hachette Book Group (HBG)—whose Christian publishing division is FaithWords, and which assumed distribution of The Shack in 2008—has also gone to court, seeking clarity on where the royalties should go.

According to the Los Angeles Times, which broke news of the dispute in July, at the center of the fallout are allegations of “improper accounting practices, millions of dollars in missing royalties, contract breaches and copyright disputes.”

A spokesperson for HBG said that the breakdown in the relationship between Young and the Windblown team, “with each party making different claims related to the publication and distribution of the book,” had prompted the company to file an interpleader action in court.

This meant that HBG had deposited into federal court the proceeds from The Shack over which the two parties were “battling and asked the court to decide how the proceeds should be divided. HBG hopes that the court will facilitate an efficient and early resolution of the Young-Windblown dispute.”

The litigation had not affected the company’s activities or distribution of The Shack, the spokesperson added.

Jacobsen, president of Windblown Media and an author himself, said in a statement that the conflict with Young was “a tragic chapter in the collaboration that produced such a wonderful book about God’s love, forgiveness and passion for relationship.”

Cummings and he had worked on The Shack at Young’s insistence, he said. “Our time of collaboration in writing, publishing and distributing this book over three years was one of the most joy-filled and spiritually enriching times of my life. Unfortunately, a collaboration works only as long as each one in it puts the relationship first.”

Young had cut off communication 18 months ago “for reasons that are still unclear to me,” Jacobsen added. “Over the next year his new management team began to make an increasing set of demands and accusations. We have made numerous attempts to discuss this with Paul and failing that, have offered to have others mediate this conflict (both mutual friends and professional mediators), to address any way he didn’t feel fairly treated and to deal with whatever personal issues compromised our friendship.

“Every attempt has been refused without comment. ... The decision to resolve our differences legally is Paul’s alone, and I have been forced into an environment that violates everything I love about relationships and all that Scripture asks believers to do to deal with our differences.

“I did everything I knew to do to avoid litigation, but in the end I have to respond to Paul’s charges in that venue to protect the commitments we have with others, based on his assurances to us.”

Jacobsen said that “nothing in my lifetime has brought greater confusion or grief to myself and my family, and I continue to pray and hope for the opportunity to resolve this in the same spirit of friendship and brotherhood that began this journey.”

God was not “for us or against our brother Paul,” Jacobsen said. “He is for a resolution steeped in the very things we wrote about together—love, grace, truth, forgiveness and laying down our lives for each other. I’m sure Jesus yearns for a full reconciliation, but lacking that, would at least appreciate it if we could find a gracious resolution and a peaceful parting.”

Writing of The Shack’s success in a guest column in Christian Retailing in 2009, Cummings and Jacobsen said they believed part of the success of the book was because they had not followed Christian publishing norms.

“People are tired of the same old, same old,” they wrote. “But, when dollars are on the line, the currency of courage tends to get ignored. ... The Shack was our little experiment. With nothing to lose (and nothing to really prove), we could risk what others wouldn’t.”

The book had “caused a lot of industry veterans to rethink their strategies,” the pair noted. “It has rekindled the fires for why they went into publishing—to tell great stories that can capture hearts and imaginations and dare to dream that such things can help change the world.”

Young’s attorney, Michael Anderson, at the Los Angeles offices of business law firm Loeb & Loeb, told Christian Retailing that the suits filed concerned more than 
$8 million in royalties. Young’s contract had promised him 50 cents per paperback sale and $1 per hardcover sale, and a third of net profits.

“After we did an accounting, we recognized that he wasn’t getting paid anywhere near what he should,” said Anderson, noting that the court had ordered an attempt at mediation before November.

Brian Flagler, principal of the Flagler Law Group in Eugene, Ore., and a consultant to the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, told Christian Retailing: “Based on what I have read of this situation, it highlights a principle I share with my firm’s Christian publishing clients: Books can have long lives, and therefore publishing agreements have longer lives than most contracts.

“Developing the organizational discipline to clearly and proactively document publishing rights and copyright ownership for all of your intellectual property can substantially reduce the risk of expensive disputes and relational friction down the road. Clear documentation provides the added benefit of increasing the value of publishing rights to a potential buyer if you ever choose to sell your company, and it frees your house to invest in distributing your content through new media channels.”

Second-generation retailers provide ‘fresh perspective and excitement’

Though many family-run independent bookstores have closed or been sold to a Christian chain because relatives were not interested in continuing the business, several second-generation retailers are providing “new blood,” while contributing “a fresh perspective and excitement” to the industry.

Industry leaders say it is a good sign that the next generation of retailers is carrying on the work of their parents because their existence is important to the survival of independent retailers.

“We have always considered the second generation the ‘new blood’ that can contribute a fresh perspective and excitement, which is contagious to all other independent retailers,” said Parable Group CEO Steve Potratz, noting that there are several second- and third-generation retailers within the marketing group. “We desperately need more new retailers that have their eyes focused on the consumer, and are leading the change necessary to meet their needs today and tomorrow.”

Among second generation retailers making their mark are Jim and Lorraine Valk, owners of Banner Books Parable Christian Store of St. Joseph in St. Joseph, Mich.—whose store won the Jim Carlson National CBA Spirit of Excellence Award, and was also singled out for its marketing efforts at June’s International Christian Retail Show in St. Louis.

CBA Chair-elect George Thomsen said that Banner Books “was chosen for its excellence in Christian retail,” although being a second-generation retailer was not part of the criterion for the award.

“The greatest reward for a second-generation retailer is in knowing that they are keeping alive the vision and work of the ministry that was started by others, and serving the work of the kingdom,” he said.

Lorraine Valk and her husband bought the store from her parents, Jake and Ruth Reedyk, on her father’s 70th birthday in September 2006. The Reedyks—who won the Jim Carlson Award in 2003—owned the store for nearly 20 years after managing it for Baker Publishing House from 1971-1987.

“The biggest challenge is following in their footsteps,” Valk said. “They ran a tight ship. My role is hands-on every day trying to replace many of the roles that my parents had, while still having multiple kids at home and living 38 miles from the store. My husband is a CPA, works a very full-time job and does the bookkeeping at night, which is such a blessing.”

Valk added that it was easier becoming a second-generation owner because she knew what she was “getting into.” “I had a basic knowledge of the industry and vendors, and had the passion to do it,” she said. “We were tremendously blessed by parents that backed away and let us do our thing, while being open to coming to help whenever we called or asked for advice. We really have the best of both worlds.”

Todd Whitaker, a second-generation retailer whose father, Jim, was chairman of CBA until earlier last year, agreed that it was easier to take over a store from family members because “you can learn so much from those who came before you.” Starting in his father’s New Life Christian Stores in Lynchburg, Va., at 12 years of age, Whitaker now manages one of New Life’s 2,500-square-foot locations in Forest, Va.

“As times change in our industry and especially in hard times, we as the younger generation also have to come up with new and innovative ways to keep the store going,” said Whitaker, 33, who recently started a Facebook network to swap ideas and encouragement with other Christian stores. “For me, that includes laser engraving, myMEDIA BurnBar and our own jewelry line. We have to come up with new and exciting things to differentiate ourselves from the competition. … Retail of any kind is tough these days... It takes a lot of work, but this has to be your ministry and not just a job.”

For Lee Criswell, chief operations officer of Pee Dee Christian Book & Supply in Florence, S.C., it made sense for him and his brother, Andrew, to take over the store in October 2005 from their parents, Clarence and Frances Criswell. CEO of Pee Dee, Andrew Criswell is a CBA board member.

“Our parents had been wanting to retire for a couple of years and had not been successful in selling the business to an outside buyer,” Lee Criswell said. “I had been in the business since 1985, and my brother, who had worked with them in the early 80’s, was able to rejoin the bookstore in 2005. … A store like ours doesn’t rest on pass success. We have to be energetic and creative just to survive.”

Meanwhile, Margaret Umble, owner of J.O.Y. Bookstore of Sinking Spring in Sinking Spring, Pa., is working to transition the store to her daughter, Loreen.

“I have no worries about her ability to do as good a job as I have,” Umble said. “Life in the Christian bookstore business is far from what it was 25 years ago. At this point, if she had to pay someone to do what she does so she could do what I do, she could not afford it.”

Elsewhere, Sherry Grosse has worked in her parents’ store—Lighthouse Christian Books in Green Bay, Wis.—since she was a teenager and then opened a second location in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., in 1990.

“My parents have given me good advice in running the store over the years,” Grosse said. “They have also given me the freedom to make changes to keep the store growing and competitive in an increasingly challenging retail environment. It is nice to be able to share the joys and challenges of Christian retail with my parents, knowing that they fully understand the ministry and business issues I face.”

CBA’s Thomsen said that second-generation retailers are critical for the survival of independent retailers. “We need second-generation retailers to continue the work that was started in their communities,” he said. “It breaks my heart to hear of what was an excellent store that closes because there was no one to carry on the family business and no suitable buyer could be found. … When this happens, the community loses.”

Running through Labor Day, Sept. 6, the show is hosted by Christian Retailing magazine, aiming to help stores set themselves for the fall and Christmas seasons with product news, order specials and training. It is the magazine's fourth virtual trade event since debuting the innovative program following last year's ICRS.

Christian suppliers and retailers are bagging some of the action in the growing market for fashionable totes and other bags. Dozens of companies have entered the business, partly to capitalize on the popularity of its fashion-accessory cousin--purses.

"They're very good sellers," said Beverly Hall, manager of The Salt Cellar in Lawton, Okla. "They're kind of staples for us, like bread, milk and eggs in a grocery store. I wouldn't want not to have them. I've got a good assortment, and I constantly sell them."