My thanks to Mark Hurley, STL’s Commercial Director, who writes in response to my post about Core Stock back in May. Mark’s original message is dated 23rd May but that message never arrived; it was re-sent on 4th July, received by me today. Presumably it’s out there in orbit somewhere along with the other one thousand billion emails that have gone astray…

Upon my return from Christian Media I read your blog posted on the 19th May-08 regarding ‘Core Stock’ and I understand you have contacted our customer service department inviting a response.
 
The core stock that is featured within STL Distribution’s monthly guide – The Bulletin – is listed by publisher because the majority of retailers buy by publisher and the Bulletin is an extension of our area sales managers’ activity who also sell by publisher.
 
Coincidentally at Christian Media this week STL Distribution invited publishers to present new title information by category.  This was supported by retail managers from Wesley Owen, Crown and other independent retailers who shared their sales experience of what has and has not worked for them.   This will build on the category work that STL Distribution has been developing with tools such as ‘The Bible Catalogue;’ ‘The Best Sellers Catalogue’, where titles are shown by category as well as genre specific see safe stockist schemes, for instance fiction and software, which STL Distribution has been working on with the independent Christian Retailer for over a year. I write this because STL Distribution is keen to continue to produce tools and information that Christian retailers find useful and feedback regarding their usefulness is essential.
 
However, irrespective of whether data is presented by publisher or category, the source is the same and I welcome your encouragement that more data is supplied to Nielsen Bookscan. To date Nielsen’s database of Christian titles is not as comprehensive as I believe they would like it to be, which is why STL Distribution has and will continue to encourage publishers to supply bibliographic data to Nielsen enabling retailers’ sales data to be captured.  I welcome the day when all within our industry believe that Nielsen’s data is comprehensive and adding significant value to buying decisions: until that time STL Distribution’s data is one of the best snapshots of what is happening within our industry.
 
STL Distribution believes the core stock list it provides supports the Christian retailer increase their stock turn but it is important that  this data and any other data available to the Christian retailer is enhanced by their own sales history derived from their electronic stock control system.   
 
Since last autumn, STL Distribution has made available to Christian Retailers its SyneRgi software FREE of charge (RRP £400) plus an £18 monthly support fee, which not only allows a retailer to order electronically from STL Distribution as late as 4pm for a same day despatch but provides a simple but effective stock control system.  Why is STL Distribution offering SyneRgi free?   As a Christian charity we believe it is imperative that Christian bookshops remain in our cities, towns and villages and remain viable allowing them to continue to impact the local Church and the local community. 
 
Stock management is an essential tool in enabling the mission aspect of a Christian Bookshop to continue supporting profitability, cash flow and showing what is and is not selling. 
 
Phil, you make two requests and one challenge:
The requests:
1. What is selling through Wesley Owen Retail Group?
This data is already available through Nielsen.  In speaking with Steve Mitchell, Wesley Owen’s Director Retail of Operation, he states, ‘Wesley Owen submit data to Nielsen on a weekly basis’.
2. Please organise your core stock by category.
I am more than willing to continue down the category route as used for example in our Best Sellers and Bible Catalogues & as used at Christian Media this week. STL Distribution would be willing to make more category data available to retailers if required.

The challenge:
3. If you’re serious about wanting to help us with our stock management rather than simply boosting sales for the publishers you’re highlighting, please offer us core stock on a see-safe basis, at least 50%.
As I have already indicated STL Distribution is offering see-safe on a number of genres. Whist see-safe is a tool STL Distribution uses, in isolation it is not enough and I would want to see a combination of see-safe, linked with proven stock control information. STL Distribution would be more than willing to work with Christian Retailers in helping to setting up a stock control system linked to a core stock programme benefiting all concerned. 

With kind regards,

Mark Hurley
Commercial Director
STL Distribution

The core stock that is featured within STL Distribution’s monthly guide – The Bulletin – is listed by publisher because the majority of retailers buy by publisher and the Bulletin is an extension of our area sales managers’ activity who also sell by publisher.

For my own part, the only reason I buy by publisher is because that’s the way your ASMs present their new title info. I organise my shop by category and I’d much rather order by category. Perhaps it’s time to review the way your ASMs work? The rest of the Bulletin is presented by category: why not core stock?

Amongst my observations I wrote:

… all that STL’s warehouse sales data can tell us is what’s going into the shops they supply. It can’t tell us what’s going out: it can’t tell us what our own and our fellow retailers’ customers are buying; and it can’t tell us what ends up stuck on retailers’ shelves, languishing quietly until the only thing that shifts it is a drastic price cut, probably to less than we bought it in for.

The thing that can tell us that is Nielsen Bookscan, and we urgently need more Christian retailers to supply their sales data to Nielsen. Every month Christian Marketplace provides us with a bestseller chart taken from Nielsen’s data — but how many of us are contributing to that? Until we reach the point where it’s most of us, we’re inevitably — to steal St Paul’s phrase — “seeing through a glass darkly”, just seeing a part-picture.

If you’re not contributing data, why not? If you are, please tell us something of your story: was it easy or difficult to set up? Has it caused any problems or brought any benefits?

I’m delighted, therefore, to have received the response below from Nielsen BookScan; thanks to Sara Mulryan for this:

As Nielsen BookScan, we’d like to add to Phil Groom’s comments that – if you are not participating – why not?

Nielsen BookScan is the definitive market measure for the book industry.  Only participating retailers are eligible to receive data and that data is a weekly Top 5,000 Total Consumer Market (TCM) titles – FREE.  The data can be analysed in a variety of ways, including verifying best selling titles by categories -  such as Religion or Mind, Body, Spirit.  From this you can build up a core stock list. 

Data must be sent from your scanned EPOS till systems on a regular schedule (simply put, a copy of your day end transactions) and all individual retailer data is held in total confidence. It is best selling market titles that are released.  Where public opinion polls are often based on a poll of less than 0.01% of the population, BookScan data is not just a sample of sales taken from a few outlets then multiplied up to create a guesstimate – it is the actual sales, from over 90% of all retail book purchases made in the UK.  Make yours count.

St Andrew’s and Wesley Owen are both participants, as well as some religious Independents. As outlined by Phil, the more who contribute, the more relevant to your needs the data is.  We welcome inquiries from each and every independent bookseller and hope to hear from you soon.

Any further queries should be addressed to the BookScan Retail Team:

• Sara Mulryan on +44 (0) 1483 712 229 or by email at sara.mulryan@nielsen.com or
• Carol Brownlee on +44 (0) 1483 712 226 or by email at carol.brownlee@nielsen.com

At LST we’ve been submitting our sales data since 2004. I wrote about the experience of setting up the LST Bookshop database for that in Christian Marketplace back in 2004. Ours is a custom-built Filemaker Pro EPoS system running in Mac OS X, something of an anomaly for Nielsen who were more used to shops running Windows based commercial systems, but it all proved quite painless and straightforward.

If you’re running any of the standard packages you should have no problems at all… and you’ll have access to all that wonderful data direct from the tills of your fellow retailers: no more guesswork based on STL’s limited and screened data on what’s leaving their warehouse…

To close, another question for STL now: how do you decide which publishers you’re going to feature each month? Is the decision based on whose products are selling the most? Or are there other criteria? Please do tell: thank you.

If you’re an STL trade account holder you’ll be familiar with that slogan, boldly proclaimed in their trade Bulletin’s  ‘Core Stock’ focus every month as they highlight the “proven sellers” from two or three publishers. These, we’re assured, are products that “sell consistently – week after week after week!” — followed by the proviso (in smaller print: you do read beyond the headlines, don’t you?) that “titles move in and out of Core Stock data”.

Which, to my way of thinking, makes the whole thing a bit of a nonsense. On the one hand, we’re told, we’re looking at “proven sellers” — “Never be out of stock with core stock”, screams the header; use this info to “Take the risk out of your buying decisions”, we’re advised. Then that tiny voice of caution: “titles move in and out…”

So are we looking at “proven sellers” or not? Does STL’s Core Stock focus really offer us the possibility of a risk-free buying experience?

In a word, no.

Because all that STL’s warehouse sales data can tell us is what’s going into the shops they supply. It can’t tell us what’s going out: it can’t tell us what our own and our fellow retailers’ customers are buying; and it can’t tell us what ends up stuck on retailers’ shelves, languishing quietly until the only thing that shifts it is a drastic price cut, probably to less than we bought it in for.

The thing that can tell us that is Nielsen Bookscan, and we urgently need more Christian retailers to supply their sales data to Nielsen. Every month Christian Marketplace provides us with a bestseller chart taken from Nielsen’s data — but how many of us are contributing to that? Until we reach the point where it’s most of us, we’re inevitably — to steal St Paul’s phrase — “seeing through a glass darkly”, just seeing a part-picture.

If you’re not contributing data, why not? If you are, please tell us something of your story: was it easy or difficult to set up? Has it caused any problems or brought any benefits?

Back to STL, however: another problem I have with STL’s Core Stock focus is that it’s based on “selected publishers” — and that, quite simply, is not the way I do business. My shop is not organised by publisher but by category, by the categories that my customers are interested in; then it’s A-Z by author surname. Organising by publisher no doubt works in a wholesaler’s warehouse, but it seems a somewhat surreal concept for a retail environment.

Of this I am certain: if I stocked my shop on the basis of STL’s monthly Core Stock profiles, my shelves would be full of dead stock and I would very soon be out of business.

So to STL I’d like to make two requests and offer a challenge: 

• Request 1: Please tell us what’s actually selling through the tills in your own retail outlets, Wesley-Owen.
• Request 2: Please organise your Core Stock focus by category, not by publisher.
• The Challenge: if you’re serious about wanting to help us with our stock management rather than simply boosting sales for the publishers you’re highlighting, please offer us Core Stock on a see-safe basis, at least 50%. 

Are you confident enough in your recommendations to share the risk with us? If not, then on what basis do you expect us to trust them?

In the end, however, for all of us, it comes down to that statement of the blindingly obvious that STL offer us each month: “The skill is to know what your customers like!”

Have you worked that one out yet? If so, how did you do it? Did you carry out a customer survey? Or have you been in business so long that you know your customers well enough to put a potential buyer’s name to every new title that you order?

For better or for worse, we’re all in this game together; let’s not compete against one another: let’s share our experiences and play together to win. And that, of course, includes, the good folk at STL: thanks guys