Northeast Ohio Bookstore Presented "Store of the Year" Award

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO- Rainbow Family Book Center of Maple Heights, Ohio was named CBA Store of the Year at the 53rd Annual International CBA Convention, held July 13-18 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. CBA is the international trade association of Christian product suppliers and retailers, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which serves 2,443 member retail stores and 685 member publishers, record companies and other product suppliers.

The CBA Impact Awards Program honors exceptional businesses within the Christian retail industry. The awards are evaluated on principles and how they're applied-not sales volume, size, or depth of inventory-so companies of any size can be winners. Retail experts judged all retailer awards. Stores that entered the retailer awards were required to fill out an extensive questionnaire that focused on best practices and involved comparison to retail industry benchmarks for each discipline.

Rainbow Family Book Center was recognized for performance far above industry standards in the key areas of inventory management, financial management, merchandise/product presentation and technology. They won or scored highly in every key area of measurement for superior stores, a finalist in every category which landed them the overall "store of the year" award.

"What these technical areas of excellence add up to is an extraordinary shopping experience for customers in the Cleveland area," said Bill Anderson, President and CEO of CBA. "When other retailers from around the country saw video of Rainbow Family Book Center, there was an audible gasp at the beauty and creative merchandising in the store along with an incomparable breadth of product selection."

With only 5% markdowns and a 3.1% accounts payable rate, a high customer-name-capture rate and high business-to-business e-commerce use, Rainbow Family Book Center owners David and Alice Wilson clearly are doing an outstanding job of managing the store's resources. But to win this award takes more than numbers, it also takes a heart for ministry. The best part of what they do, the Wilsons say, is to minister to people in need.

"Above and beyond the sales, we get the opportunity to fix lives and hearts in a unique way through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," David Wilson says. "Our job is to provide products so that others will learn the way to Jesus Christ and uplift people in their daily walk." That ministry is so important, Wilson says, that they've made it a part of the store's mission statement which reads:

It is our desire to serve the church and the community of believers by providing the best and widest selection of Bible-based Christian products in order that all my grow in their spiritual walk with our Lord Jesus Christ and be equipped to spread the good news of the gospel.

According to Wilson, it is the friendly, warm and exciting atmosphere at Rainbow Christian Store that makes their store distinctive, a meeting place for people for whom faith is the centerpoint of life. "It is not just a shopping trip," he says, "It is an experience."

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