LITTLE ROCK — Customers were emptying the shelves at the Cokesbury bookstore in downtown Little Rock on Monday afternoon, the first day of a 75 percent off sale. They were also making connections. Two friends who hadn’t seen each other in months caught up. Two strangers discussed each other’s stacks of books, and ended up exchanging phone numbers.
The shelves won’t be restocked, and that kind of community will have to happen elsewhere. On Friday, the Cokesbury bookstore will close.
It’s not the choice of the bookstore, or of the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church, with which the bookstore is affiliated. The decision was announced in November by the United Methodist Publishing House, which started closing all38 of its brick-and-mortar stores in January. The last will close in April. Its 19 seminary bookstores will also close or be transferred to other operators.
The move is part of a strategy called Cokesbury/Next, a transition in which the cokesbury.com website will be beefed up. Hours will be extended at the Cokesbury Call Center and sales representatives will take a more active role. Local events will also be added, where customers can still do what many people like going to a bookstore for: actually laying hands on books and browsing.
Store manager Yvonne Armstrong has watched the market changes in almost 18 years at the store.
“The way people pay for things is also reflective of the way people buy things in general,” she said.
Years ago, she’d have stacks of checks at the end of the day. Now people swipe a card, or buy online, especially with the advent of e-readers.
“I buy online myself,” said Armstrong, who reads some materials on her iPad. “I find if I want to study something, I want a real book.”
For its small size, the store packed a wide variety of materials.
“In my experience, Cokesbury is the only store where you’ll find a broad range of theological choices,” Armstrong said. “You might find Marcus Borg and Max Lucado on the same bookshelf.”
Amy Smith, associate to the president and publisher in the Nashville headquarters, discussed the economic reasons for the decision.
“Over the last 10 years in the stores there’s been a flow erosion and people shifting to other ways of purchasing,” she said, referring to the company’s survey, which showed that only 15 percent of customers used the bookstores exclusively, while an increasing number shopped online. Only about 33 percent had a Cokesbury bookstore within 50 miles of their homes or churches.
The stores’ costs in fiscal 2012 were collectively $2 million more than their combined sales. Profitability information on individual stores has not been released.
“There were some stores, obviously, that were in better shape than others,” Smith said, noting that the possibility of keeping some stores open was considered.
The Arkansas store was one of the profitable ones, Armstrong said.
“Even though our store has always made money and I think been pretty successful, we’re not the majority in the chain,” she said. “I expected this to happen, but I was hoping it would take another 10years.”
In some ways the difficult decision is simply following market trends, Smith said. Borders bookstores have closed. Many other brick and-mortars stay viable by exchanging some bookshelves for other products.
A sales representative will be based in Little Rock and duties will include calling on individual churches, she said.
“There will be all kinds of enhancements on cokesbury. com,” Smith said, including more page views of books available, and downloadable samples. “We’ll be doing local resource fairs. We’ll try to be there as much as possible with products that people can see and touch.”
Armstrong could have applied for the sales rep job. She chose not to.
“That’s not my skill set,” she said of the sales calls, travel and working from home that it would entail. “If you were to take all the parts of my job that I don’t like and make a new job, it would be that job. … It’s a very important job in the lives of our churches, and I certainly will be glad to support them.”
Smith acknowledged that many customers are upset, and have let the company know.
“There have been many expressions of support and understanding. … And ofcourse there have been many people with long histories with the fantastic staff in the local stores, and the convenience of that,” she said. “Many people have called just to express their sorrow about that.”
One of the sorrowful is the Rev. Donna Rountree, pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Conway.
“It just makes me sick,” said Rountree, who learned of the closing last fall on one of her biweekly visits to the store. Since it’s on the way in her commute from her home in Scott, it’s convenient for her to do all kinds of shopping at the store, including buying packs of church bulletins on sale, Communion cups and gifts, such as the candle holders she chose for a departing organist last year.
She has bought a Communion chalice there, and she gets measured and fitted there for her clergy robes - something someone at the call center can’t do, she said.
She laments the loss of the wide spectrum of books, which she hasn’t found in other, larger Christian bookstores, and of Armstrong’s personal service and expertise in answering her questions.
“She has the most incredible knowledge,” Rountree said. “When I go in there and I say I need some Vacation Bible School curriculum for my church, she says, ‘These are the three that you would probably want.’ I can trust that what she has put out there is something I can work with. And I take all three of them to the church, and what people don’t want I take back. I can’t do that online either.”
Like many Cokesbury customers, Rountree received an e-mailed letter explaining the Cokesbury/Next plan. She wrote back, expressing dissatisfaction over the closing and concern for what’s to become of the employees.
“We have a number of things in place in terms of assistance with finding new jobs,” Smith said. Employees are receiving severance packages, help with writing and sending resumes, and options for continuing health insurance, she said.
Armstrong, who came to the bookstore from a banking background, is just beginning to consider the next step. “I’m viewing it as an adventure,” she said. “I feel like I have to react to this as a person of faith.”
The days of bookstores in general are numbered, she fears. “But I do understand the economic realities,” she said. “I’m not bitter about this, but I do mourn the loss of a pretty special place.”
Armstrong said a previous manager of the store commented, “we were like bartenders for the denomination. We knew people when they walked in.”
The final day for employees will be March 8 - a doubly sad day for Armstrong. It’s the fifth anniversary of her husband’s death.
She and Donald Armstrong, who became a United Methodist minister, met at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. When he brought her home to Little Rock to meet his parents, she said, “the second place he brought me was Cokesbury. That pretty much tells you there is that place of connection.’’
Religion, Pages 12 on 02/23/2013