Merchandising by Gunnar Simonsen //

Gunnar Simonsen is general manager of Christian Supply Centers, a 15-store retail chain based in the Pacific Northwest with stores in Oregon,

Washington, and Idaho. Married to Traci, they have a 10-year-old daughter, Kira.

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YOUR STORE’S HEARTBEAT

MAKES THE STORY COME

ALIVE.

WHAT DOES A

HEARTBEAT

LOOK LIKE?

Recently, I had a conveRsation with another retailer who was considering closing shop and finally retiring. he’d been in business for I don’t know how long. It was difficult to sit there and listen to this man struggle with the reality that it may be time to stop that which he had poured his heart, mind, and soul into for so many years. But then, he said: “I just don’t have it in me to innovate one more time.”

as he said this, the brutal reality of running a cutting-edge and relevant retail operation in this day and age of overstimulation began to hit me like a ton of bricks.

In my previous column, I wrote about asking the question whether our stores consistently reflected The Greatest story ever told.

This month, I’d like to expand on that question and ask: What does that look like?

Frankly, you can have the best-looking store in the world, but if there’s no heartbeat, what’s the point?

It would be very easy for me to write another column on how to best display various items in this or that category. But, honestly, until we get the heartbeat down, does the other stuff really matter?

I recently heard of a pastor who was beginning to be questioned by his congregation because he

always preached on a message of God’s love. They asked him, “do you have anything else you’re ever going to preach on?”

“Well, I figure when we get the message of God’s love down pat, then we’ll move on to the next topic,” he replied.

a friend and I were having a cup of coffee the other day when he pulled out a sheet of paper he’d been showing other retailers about what we

in brick-and-mortar stores offer versus amazon. as you can guess, with every difference, amazon by far offered so much more then we could ever think (of course, outside of more effective use of real-time technology on our part. But, who has the money to invest in all this anyway?).

as I read through it, I understood how such a message could be the final straw for retailers like the one I mentioned in the first paragraph. But,

12 CBA Retailers+Resources | 11.08

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