The (once) popular bookstore "Christian Reads", with over 300 brick-and-mortar locations in 28 states across the United States, is closing shop. This has come after several years of declining "Premium Blend" Bible sales, which is mostly to blame. "We were really hoping to make it through the release of the movie-remake of 'The Shack', anticipating a fresh rush of sales on that book, but we have fallen short of that goal. We can maintain this no longer", CEO Ashley Gregory told us.
The cost of Bibles has been going up over the years, as publishers compete on coming up with the fanciest and most elegant designs available. With such artwork and craftsmanship, however, comes great cost. In short, it is hard to produce an affordable copy that people want to buy. Trying to provide Bibles in every translation available besides the standby version such as "The Message", has been difficult to know which ones to choose. Deviating to far has been a real gamble, we are told. "We and the publishers agreed that the brighter colors and artistic designs must continue to improve, or they would just stop selling. You know, something that really looks great on the shelf". Ashley further relented, "Times are a changing." All of this is to say, the profit margins are not great with these.
It reached a point in this business where the various artistic changes that were attempted to make them pop, were no longer enough to keep people coming back for more. Without Joel Osteen, we are told doors would have closed years ago. "Joel Osteen and Joyce Mayer have been our bread and butter while we tried to figure out what to do about the Bible situation. All Joel had to do was drop a book with his beautiful smile and we could barely keep it on the shelves. Joel really got us through some tough times. What is a Christian bookstore without Bibles? We had to stock them, and they had to be really interesting looking. Even though it was really the Bibles that did us in, and there were many times we considered doing away with them in our inventory. We had to stay true to our convictions, at great cost. The Word of God is important in the Christian life. We had to stock Bibles."
Over the next two months, the stores will be clearing out all remaining Bible inventory at a 10% discount, which we are told is the best that can be done--possibly as much as 20% off during the last couple weeks. However, "Your Best Life Now", has a great return of investment for stores and moves easily. Christian Reads has plans to discount them 40% on week one of the Going-Out-of-Business Sale, and though unlikely any will be left by the end of the first month, may go as low as 80% in the last week.
"This is really just a time for us to cut our losses. We hope it can come at a great deal for many of our longtime customers", we were told.
(In the above post, any names of people and their given situations are entirely made up to illustrate a point of satire)
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