NEWS FEATURE: Christian companies make beeline for online

c. 1999 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Christian companies big and small, old and new are flocking to cyberspace to sell books, Bibles, music and videos. Within the last few years established religious publishers, distributors and retailers as well as newer Internet commerce ventures have launched hundreds of sites specializing in online retailing.”Christians are turning […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Christian companies big and small, old and new are flocking to cyberspace to sell books, Bibles, music and videos.

Within the last few years established religious publishers, distributors and retailers as well as newer Internet commerce ventures have launched hundreds of sites specializing in online retailing.”Christians are turning to the Net in staggering numbers to find the resources they need at prices and related terms that they can live with,”said Dale T. Mason, Director of Marketing for Gospel Communications International Inc., in an e-mail interview.


The Muskegon, Mich.-based company was founded in 1950 as Gospel Films to produce and distribute religious films and film strips, which were that era’s cutting-edge communications technology. In 1995 the company launched a Christian Web site (http://www.gospelcom.net) which currently supports links to 125 ministry organizations and generates nearly two million”hits”(or visits) daily, making it the Internet’s most-visited religious site.

Like the acclaimed christianityonline.com site developed by Wheaton, Ill.-based periodical publisher Christianity Today Inc., the gospelcom site features vast and varied informational resources as well as access to online shopping.

A newer Christian site is Dallas-based http://www.musicforce.com, whose motto is,”If heaven had a music store.”Launched last December, the site sports flashy graphics, features news, reviews and concert information about contemporary Christian musicians, and offers some 7,000-plus compact disc titles.

Rick McCabe, musicforce’s CEO, believes his site can reach consumers who might never set foot in a Christian bookstore and may be unaware of the growing quality and variety of today’s Christian music.”If our goal is to grow in the Christian music market, then we must believe it is expandable _ an ever-growing pie,”said McCabe.”Therefore, I am less interested in market-share and competition; I just want to sell millions of CDs. And if (other Christian sites) sell millions too, then we have been successful both in our businesses and for the cause of Christ.” But competition is growing more intense, and musicforce seeks to distinguish itself from popular sites like crosswalk.com and christiansuperstore.com by sponsoring tours by artists like the Newsboys, broadcasting events like a recent live concert by band Caedmon’s Call, and acquiring smaller companies like Fish TV, a Christian music video show and Club Fish, a buying service.

While some companies are diving head-first into virtual retailing, established Christian retailers are wading in more slowly and are hoping to steer customers toward their existing real-world stores in the process.”Our strategy for the site that you see today as familychristian.com was to learn something about Internet retailing, sell some products, and use our experience to devise a more substantial strategy,”said Jef Fite, director of Internet Retailing for the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Family Christian Stores chain.

Jim Seybert, vice president of marketing for The Parable Group, an association of 330 independently owned Christian retail stores in the United States and Canada, says sales from the parable.com site”have not even come close to covering our costs,”but he is guardedly optimistic.”We believe it will continue to grow, although we don’t think it will ever replace, or even do significant `damage’ to traditional retail,”he said.”It’s another channel, another door into our stores. We are hanging an `open for business’ sign on the window and serving their needs.” Riverside Distributors even gives participating retail stores a commission from sales at its firstnetchristian.com site, which was launched last summer.

None of the Christian e-tailers contacted for this article would release online sales figures, but all acknowledged that their new ventures are but a small piece of a much larger and rapidly growing online commerce industry which used computers and modems to sell an estimated $5 billion worth of merchandise last year and may quintuple over the next few years.


The online bookselling industry’s undisputed leader is amazon.com, which had sales of over $600 million last year and generally offers better discounts, superior customer service, and far greater selection than the fledgling Christian sites.

Take, for example, Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, an earthy book about the author’s Christian conversion which has been on national bestseller lists for nearly three months. The only major Christian site to offer the book is christianbook.com, which provides an answer to the frequently asked question,”Why do you carry books by that author?” Individual Christian stores are getting into the act, too. While most store sites are primitive, the csChristian.com site, launched in 1997 by Cedar Springs Christian Stores, a family operation in Knoxville, Tenn., is wildly ambitious, offering e-shoppers more than 120,000 books, Bibles, and music products.”Our mission is to equip the saints for their walk with the Lord and to help them share their faith with others,”says Link McGinnis, who runs the site for his boss and dad.”The mission of the Internet site doesn’t change, it just provides another avenue to the same goal: serving God by serving God’s people.” In recent months, nine Internet-only”virtual stores”have applied for membership in the Christian Booksellers Association, a group which represents thousands of traditional retailers but currently has no membership category for virtual stores _ an issue CBA’s board will discuss this summer.”Internet sales are increasing,”says Bill Anderson, CBA’s president,”but the Internet can’t begin to duplicate brick-and-mortar stores’ greatest advantage, which is live interaction with people.”

DEA END RABEY

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