Attendee registrations by the end of May for next month's International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) in Atlanta were up 24% over the comparable pre-event period last year, CBA announced.

The total number of exhibiting companies was down 7% and the total number of booths sold was down 4% to the same date, but additional vendors were expected to sign up for the July 10-13 event in the run-up, said CBA Executive Director Curtis Riskey.

Media registrations for the 2011 show have already exceeded last year's total, he added. "This is exciting because it helps tell the story of Christian stores. It positions them as resources for these key projects and programs and helps drive traffic and sales to Christian stores."

Riskey said that CBA believed it was seeing "a progressive recovery" for the trade show—for which 2010 attendance was flat on 2009, after several years of decline—"aligned with what exhibition-industry analysts have projected as paralleling the overall U.S. economic recovery."

More than 40 new exhibitors will be featured in the Debut Avenue area of the exhibition floor at the Georgia World Congress Center. Among features of the Town Center area will be information about this year's Christian Store Week and an Espresso Book Machine demonstrating in-store print-on-demand possibilities.

"We recognize that the world is changing and that trade shows and conventions overall need to help the industries they serve better connect, do business together, promote their industry to consumers at large, advocate legislation and do more than just sell things," Riskey said of changes to ICRS.

CBA was working to develop new ways to make the trade-show part of the event more efficient and valuable for business and sales as well as improving training, networking and campaign launches, he added.

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