THE ECONOMIC CRISIS has hit another Christian retailer as Jireh Books and Gifts of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, have been forced to close the shop down due to the rising costs of rents and other circumstances beyond their control.
The shop closed its doors at the end of April, but Dawn Parkes, who owns the business, is not one to give up just like that and is pressing on with running stalls at events and parties all around the area, with an emphasis on fairtrade.
Please pray for Dawn in her rovings and if you’re in the area, or have contact with churches/community groups in the area, please consider inviting or encouraging them to invite her along.
IT’S BEEN ANOTHER REMARKABLE MONTH in the world of Christian bookselling, with news emerging of shops and businesses struggling or closing down on the one hand, rescues, signs & wonders on the other, and somewhere in between, Christian author Stephen Sizer has his back to the wall as he faces further accusations of antisemitism. Let’s weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice, pray that truth, honesty and justice may prevail (ideally along with a little common sense), and live in hope of April showers driving footfall into those stores that need it…
ACORN DIRECT — the Christian music mail order specialist once based in the Channel Islands but now operating c/o Footprints, Darlington — are feeling the pinch and have announced changes to their payment processing procedures in an effort to cut costs:
The strains of the economic downturn has caught up with AcornDirect and we need to make some changes over the coming weeks.
With immediate effect we are reducing our payment options to Paypal alone. Paypal accept all forms of credit card payment and you do not have to have a Paypal account.
To use payment without a Paypal account select the “I don’t have a Paypal account” option.
In the next 3 – 4 weeks we will be changing our shopping cart and this may present a few problems. Please bear with us as we make these important changes.
Why change? The internet is a very competitive place to operate in – gone are the halcyon days of the late 90′s when we first traded and we were the only UK Christian Music site. Now there are a few of us all struggling for the same business. Our desire has always been to give the best price and to continue to this we must cut costs. Please pray for us as we introduce these changes.
Our season as your local Christian bookshop in Stamford is drawing to a close. It has been a pleasure and a joy to have been able to serve you as a local christian ministry and bookshop in this community.
We, as a team have enjoyed the immense privilege of serving you and we have been blessed how God has enabled us and provided ministry opportunities along the journey.
As with life, there are seasons and what worked 10 years ago does not work today. Reasons for closing include the tough economic climate, battle for internet sales, the generational change in the importance of the local high street and the presence of E-books.
It is with sadness but excitement about the future that Kayleigh and I will be moving to Birmingham in early May to help build the team there. We have met many friends through the bookshop here in Stamford and we hope to keep in contact with as many as possible.
The building that houses the bookshop is owned by a christian trust and it is hoped that the trustees will work with local churches to maintain a christian witness in this spot. CLC will do all it can to support this.
If anyone is interested in running a church bookstall, CLC will also do all it can to support this. Please contact us for more information.
CLC Bookshop, Stamford will close at Easter, the exact date is still to be confirmed.
With Every Blessing.
The date of the closure has since been confirmed as next weekend, Saturday 7th April, doors closing at 5pm: tea and cake will be available all day and all are welcome. In the meantime the closing down sale is underway and the message is, “Come and grab a bargain while you can!”
EMW’s Cardiff Christian Bookshop stock redistributed
STOCK FROM the EMW Cardiff Christian Bookshop, which closed in January, has now been redistributed amongst their other shops, with clearance titles available for only £1. From the latest EMW Bookshops newsletter:
Closing the Cardiff Christian Bookshop
Closing the Cardiff Christian Bookshop
For me it was a great sadness to stand at the door of the Christian Bookshop in Cardiff and attempt to explain to a woman on a mobility scooter where she could buy a Bible in the city centre.
All of the remaining stock from the Cardiff shop has been distributed around our remaining shops. It does mean that if you can make it into one of our shops over the next few weeks you will find a shelf of books for £1, including Pilgrim’s Progress
Norwich Christian Resource Centre facing threat of closure
FORMER SPCK BOOKSHOP Norwich Christian Resource Centre is struggling to balance the books and if footfall and purchasing do not show significant improvements soon, the shop may reach the point of no return. The difficulties were first reported by Network Norwich, Norwich’s online Christian news portal, then subsequently picked up by the Norwich Evening News:
Commenting on the store’s trading deficit, shop manager Steve Foyster is cited:
If this continues, even in the short term, it is almost inevitable that the centre will close. All the paid staff are braced for another cut in hours and we have been destocking books and CDs by up to 40% via our sale and returning for credit to suppliers.
A sponsored walk around the city centre and along the river has been planned for Sunday 29th April to help raise some of the much-needed funds for the Centre’s survival. The walk starts at 3pm from the Centre (St Michael-at-Plea Church, Redwell Street), covers a distance of 3 miles and ends at the Forget-me-Not Café with complimentary refreshments for everyone taking part. More details and sponsorship forms are available from the Centre or online: Norwich Christian centre’s April Amble.
Norwich Christian centre's April Amble
Spirit Chester: Free Miracles also available
IN CHESTER, a different and more positive story is emerging:
CHRISTIAN AUTHOR and speaker Stephen Sizer, who campaigns on behalf of Palestinian Christians struggling under Israel’s security restrictions, has come under scrutiny from the Council of Christians and Jews, who have lodged complaints to his Bishop and alleged charges of antisemitism and incitement to racial hatred against him with Surrey police.
Stephen has faced such accusations before and has found himself at the wrong end of long-running hate and defamation campaigns from the pro-Zionist movement, some details of which may be found on his blog: Seismic Shock: One Year On (18 Sept 2009).
Whatever your particular views of the current Middle East situation and Israeli-Palestinian relations in particular, one thing is clear: attempting to silence criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians simply by slapping the label ‘antisemitism’ onto those who speak out do not address the issue. Please pray for wisdom, grace, tolerance and understanding on all sides. More information, links to reports elsewhere and some discussion are available on my personal blog: Jeremiah’s Underpants and a Link Too Far: CCJ, Stephen Sizer and The Ugly Truth (16 Mar 2012).
Wesley Owen Coleraine is dead: long live Faith Mission!
CONGRATULATIONS to all concerned at Wesley Owen Coleraine, which reopened this week under the FM Bookshops banner as Faith Mission Coleraine. From their now renamed facebook page:
The future of Wesley Owen Coleraine
At the time of posting, Wesley Owen have yet to update their branches index. The transfer of the Coleraine branch to FM Bookshops leaves the company with only three branches, in Birmingham, Glasgow and York.
Citing the now ubiquitous complaint of “increased competition from online booksellers” as the reason for the closure, the announcement was made last week in February’s issue of E-Round, the Diocesan newsletter, and goes on to pay tribute to Ron Upton, the bookshop manager:
Diocesan Resources Centre
The Diocese of St Albans’ Resource Centre at Holywell Lodge is to close in the light of increased competition from online booksellers but will continue to offer for loan a variety of teaching materials and equipment used by churches and schools across the Diocese. Remaining stock will be offered at reduced prices.
David Nye, Chair of the St Albans Diocesan Board of Finance, thanked the departing Resource Centre Manager, Ron Upton: “Ron is known to dozens and dozens of people across the Diocese for his knowledge of the book and magazine trade, his devoted ministry as a Reader and his friendliness. He has contributed an enormous amount. He goes with many prayers for the future.”
Susan Pope, Diocesan Secretary, added, “I pay Ron warm tribute for what he has given over the last ten years. He will be much missed by colleagues at Holywell Lodge and beyond.”
“To survive, shops have got to find a way forward…”
Why use up petrol, and time to make a journey to a shop that may not have the item required in stock when you can sit comfortably at home, browse a site that has every book or item in its store and that can send it within 48 hours? Plus the internet site is open 24 hours whereas a shop is only open 9am-5pm a mere eight hours.
To survive, shops have got to find a way forward, to make it a more viable proposition. Now Kindle has arrived, and once more customers are using the internet to acquire the books they want rather than visiting a bookshop. It’s a very difficult problem that shops have got to solve, and at present we at Ichthus are searching for answers. One thing we do know is that locals need to use the shops they have left or the high street will become a thing of the past.
Answers, please, not on a postcard but in a tweet, status update or comment below…
The Bookseller, 31/1/2012: Bulk of Wesley Owen bookshops to close
ACCORDING TO A BOOKSELLER REPORT published this morning, all but one of the Wesley Owen bookshops now look set to close as the company focuses on its online trading rather than the bricks & mortar stores:
Wesley Owen has announced it may close all but one of its chain of Christian bookshops, saying the bricks and mortar business has been overtaken by digital and online growth.
The chain closed its Bath and Bristol branches at the weekend, resulting in 18 job losses, and has told staff and suppliers it intends to “significantly reduce its high street presence.”
Currently 15 employees are in consultations about the future of their jobs and the company’s retail director, Steve Mitchell, told The Bookseller: “We think there will be one – but maybe two or three stores left.”
The report goes on to quote Steve as saying,
Making the decision to do this has been as hard as decisions get. It is partly to do with the economic position, but even if we had waited until the economy got better it is a brave man to bet against the online business which is so rapidly growing. We have seen our online business growing significantly – 3-400% in the last two years – and we recently started selling e-books and that has taken off rapidly too.
and concludes with the observation that “it is our view that the charity or independent model is now the best option to maintain physical Christian stores.”
Update, 26/1/2011: Official announcements about the closures have now been posted by Wesley Owen: Bath | Bristol (pdfs, identical apart from the store locations and dates of closure)
The Bath Chronicle published a report on Weds 25/1/2012: Christian bookshop closes its doors
NEWS EMERGED YESTERDAY of further redundancies at Wesley Owen as the Bath and Bristol stores closed their doors for the last time; and whilst in certain respects that news — coming so soon after the weekend’s news of more job losses at TMD — might seem beyond worse, all is not yet lost: Richard Greatrex, former manager of the Bath store, has branched out independently with his own venture, Windflower Books.
Describing the project in a welcome message on the company’s newly launched website and blog, Richard writes:
Windflower Books has been in existence since 2007 as a small scale concern selling secondhand and remaindered theological books on the internet, supplying bookstalls for communities and events and publishing small runs of specialist material.
2012 sees a change in the Windflower venture as we seek to supply the needs of individuals, churches and communities in the South West who have lost their own local Christian Bookshops.
From a small start we hope to develop a system of bespoke bookselling tailored to the specific needs of each community we are working with. We are in the process of negotiating our first sites for enhanced bookstalls in local churches. Keep checking our blog, our Facebook page (Windflower Books) or our Twitter feed (windflowerbooks) for further details…
If you live in the South West and would like Richard to provide bookstall services for your church, do give him a shout: full contact details are available on the facebook page; and if you live further away, just hit that facebook Like button anyway to cheer him on.
Richard, I salute you: may the Lord bless you richly in this venture, and may your bookstalls be many and more popular than you can even begin to imagine.
NOTTINGHAM, once home to some six Christian bookshops, is now apparently without any, following the reported closure of Beeston’s Christian Book Centre to make way for a tramline.
You may already have heard the sad news that our Cardiff shop is closing. If you are in the Cardiff area it would be a great opportunity to take advantage of their closing down sale. Their sale starts on the 28th December and the final closing date is Saturday January 14th. Call in to bag lots of bargains. Please also pray for our staff there: Stuart and Alan as they seek employment.
Writing in the shop’s November prayer letter, bookshop manager Stuart Arnold expresses mixed emotions: sadness at the shop’s demise but hope for the future as a number of local church leaders join forces for a new evangelical initiative in the city:
Cardiff Christian Bookshop - Prayer Letter, November 2011 (pdf, 418kb)
Dear Friends,
I have really mixed emotions as I write to let you know our latest news. We have been unable to secure funding to support the shop through the next financial year. We will, therefore, be closing down in January. The staff will be redundant, the stock sold off and the premises returned to the landlord. We have benefited from the financial support of the Evangelical Movement of Wales (EMW) for many years and we reported in our prayer letter last February that this support was coming to an end.
We intend to serve customers as well as possible and to remain a light for the gospel here in the city centre right up until 5.30pm on 14 January 2012. We are fully stocked for Christmas and would encourage you to still use us between now and then.
A Christian Centre for Cardiff
If you read our last prayer letter, you will be aware of our proposed Christian Centre for Cardiff. In support of this, we have prepared a fairly comprehensive Information Pack which was supplied to interested churches in August. We had an encouraging meeting with church leaders in September and there are now several local churches which have joined the team to carry that project forward. With the closure of the existing bookshop, we will no longer be seeking to maintain a continuous service to the city. The new ministry will be a completely fresh start, under local ownership, hopefully being opened later in 2012.
Unlike the situation for many smaller towns, the demise of this shop does not leave Cardiff without a Christian bookshop: details of other shops across the range of denominations and theological persuasions, including the former SPCK bookshop, trading independently since July 2008 as Churches Together Bookshop, may be found under Cardiff in the UK Christian Bookshops Directory:
Updates for all UKCBD entries are in progress: details of the most recent updates are listed on the UKCBD Home Page and here, under Latest Updates (link at the top of every page and post).
But one shop, Unity Bookshop in Petersfield, Hampshire, isn’t giving up without a fight and has launched a fundraising appeal to raise £10,000 to offset an ongoing annual deficit of £5,000 and — if the plan comes together — keep the shop open through 2012. Whether the shop can remain open beyond 2012 remains an open question, however: whilst donations can help as a one-off solution, in the longer term, like any shop, what’s actually needed is more customers. Speaking to The News, Portsmouth, Di Mackarness, chairwoman of the shop’s trustees, describes the situation:
It would be desperately sad if we had to close, but we have to be business-like about it, and if it comes to the crunch we will bow out with dignity.
But not without a fight first.We’ve never had to ask for funding before and we didn’t think we would need to.
We thought we could weather the storm like we have done in the past. But now we feel like we’re fighting a losing battle because technology is so advanced and less and less people are using the shop.
Donations will really help us get back on our feet in the short term, but in the long run what we really need is for more people to shop there.
SAD NEWS has emerged this week as Quench Bookshops have conceded defeat in St Albans, with the shop scheduled for closure on December 31st this year.
Reasons given for the shop’s demise include, amongst other factors, the current economic climate, shop relocations and name changes, and the inevitable “competition from the internet” as customers find online shopping “easier and sometimes cheaper”, the net result of which has been decreased footfall rendering the store economically unviable.
Guy Marshall, who moved with the store when it was taken over from the St Andrew’s chain in 2009, and has been selling Christian books in St Albans for 30 years, will be taking this opportunity to retire from the shop — but not necessarily from his other involvements: he plans to take a break, after which … watch this space.
Guy, I salute you and look forward to seeing where you go from here: may the Lord bless you and keep you.
QUENCH – ST ALBANS
It is with great regret that we have to tell you that the St Albans branch of Quench will cease trading on 31st December 2011.
Several factors have contributed to this sad outcome, the economic recession in the country, the various moves the shop has made over the past few years and associated name changes, the reduced amount of space we have at Holywell Hill compared with our previous stores, the lack of convenient parking close to the shop and of course competition from the internet where customers find it easier and sometimes cheaper to shop on-line. The net result is that far fewer customers visit the shop and this has made this retail store uneconomic to run.
Please delete my name and Branch details from your database for any future mailings and correspondence. After 31st December emails to St Albans will not get a response or be seen, so please remove our email address from your list of Contacts.
The Quench Head Office is the Maidenhead branch and will handle any queries at maidenhead[at]quenchshops.com
Thank you for all the service you have given us over the years.
NEWS EMERGED this weekend of another closure as Living Oasis Manchester reportedly closed its doors for the last time on Saturday, and Leeds has issued a last-ditch shout out for help on facebook, announcing that they are “exploring other options” as Nationwide Christian Trust prepares to withdraw support:
Living Oasis Leeds: facebook announcement, 19/07/2011: As of last Friday morning, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that NCT are able to support the Leeds vision going forward...
The company’s difficulties have been well charted both here and by the Bookseller, with their latest report citing Ray George describing Harrogate as the only viable store:
Living Oasis Cheltenham shut up shop last Friday (8th July), becoming the chain’s fifth closure in four weeks. Ray George, the chain’s owner, said only the Harrogate branch is making money. On average the recently closed stores were losing £2,000–£4,000 a month, which George said was unsustainable.
The report also cites Eddie Olliffe, who observes succinctly:
I think the model was flawed—to rely on financial support from the church community I think was naïve, because churches themselves are struggling and perhaps do not have the resources or the vision.
An earlier report states that staff in Cheltenham were given only two days notice, which sadly seems to typify the lack of respect NCT has shown to its staff, a factor that has no doubt contributed to the company’s demise as bookseller morale has crumbled.
As of the date of this report, only Harrogate, South Woodford and Watford appear to remain trading, with Liverpool still in limbo pending completion of its “Phase 2″ redevelopment as it continues to seek investors. The claim to be “one of a growing, national chain of stores” has been removed from the Who We Are page and — with an interesting change in emphasis — the store now describes itself as “working in partnership with Nationwide Christian Trust”.
Todays sale went ever so very well! I’m stunned as well as a bit worn out. Sold lots and lots of books, two guitars and a train set! Big thanks to all who donated books and to helpers and customers. Next one booked for Saturday 24th September, again at Sherwood Methodist. No plans beyond that so far.
If you’re in Nottingham, please book that date in your diary now and let’s see what the future brings…
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