Francis gives Catholic gift stores hope for a boom

The Catholic gift sector has a new opportunity to expand thanks to the impact of Pope Francis, if businesses can update their approach and broaden their inventory beyond the usual catalogue of sacred objects, reports the Huffington Post.

“If you are a Catholic gift and bookstore and you are not willing to reinvent yourself, you are going to be out of business,” said Alan Napleton, president of the US Catholic Marketing Network at its 17th annual trade show from August 6-9.

“God doesn’t seem to suspend the laws of economics just because we’re Catholic,” he added with a laugh.

The potential for success is there, Napleton said, mainly because Catholics have been so far behind the retail curve that there is a large untapped customer base — more than 60 million Catholics in the U.S. alone. Moreover, he said, a growing number of churches are willing to host bookstores, which helps business.

Also contributing to the sense of hope is the enormous enthusiasm generated across the Catholic world by the election of Pope Francis in March. “He’s a hard guy not to love,” said Napleton, “and that will drive people into the churches — and the bookstores.”

Still, success will require hard work. 

Book, music and video sales remain the backbone of the Catholic retail business, but customers increasingly look for those items in many other venues, a phenomenon that is also proving to be a mortal threat to brick-and-mortar chains like Barnes & Noble.

The challenges facing religious retailers are most evident in the multibillion-dollar evangelical marketplace, which dwarfs the Catholic market. 

In the 1990s, members of the CBA — which started in 1950 as the Christian Booksellers Association — rapidly expanded their network of stores just as the Internet started to shift retail’s center of gravity to the Web.