The incoming chairman of CBA has urged industry members to look both ways as they plan for the future.

George Thomsen says that retailers and suppliers need to remember the past while they try to find new ways to work together in the days ahead.

"We need to revisit our past and remember why it was we got into this industry/ministry," Thomsen said in an extended interview with Christian Retailing ahead of his taking over as the retailers trade group chairman next month.

"We did not do it to get rich, and we knew that it would not be easy. I think that we have become less satisfied now because the boon years are in our recent past and memory. We have tasted that success and expect that it will always be that way."

A church bookstore director and consultant to other stores, Thomsen said that he hoped that CBA could be a catalyst to "dialogue and change in our industry culture.

"For that to happen, we need to be willing to work together and to develop synergy. We need to get people together and talk about what we can do to make the industry work better and to be sure that we are not working at cross-purposes."

The first church bookstore representative to lead CBA's board, Thomsen inherits the leadership of a downsized organization with a new top executive.

Since he was appointed to the board in 2008, becoming chairman-elect last year, Thomsen has seen the departure of longtime President and CEO Bill Anderson, the sale of the organization's headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the adoption of a new management model with Curtis Riskey appointed as executive director.

Read the complete interview in the September issue of Christian Retailing.

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