Beyond IBS-STL: The view from the bridge
As the dust begins to settle a little on the biggest ever shake up in the UK Christian media industry, Christian Marketplace caught up with three of the men who have been right at the helm of the changes resulting from the break-up of IBS-STL UK at the end of last year.
We asked them how things were going in the first few weeks following the acquisition of STL Distribution (STL-D) by John Ritchie Ltd., Australian newcomer Koorong taking Authentic Books along with eight Wesley Owen stores and wesleyowen.com and also CLC UK who acquired six stores.
Paul Bootes – Koorong
Paul Bootes, Managing Director of Koorong, told us that it had all happened very quickly and in a compressed timeframe, which had made the process challenging for all concerned.
Koorong has been described as the ‘most successsful Christian retailer in the world’. Asked what changes the Koorong approach would bring to the UK Bootes said: “Our systems and our marketing are the key to our success. So the improvements will be seen, I think, in our inventory management, our marketing and our systems.”
Koorong has 60% market share in Australia and Bootes said that the company saw a move into the UK as “an overseas opportunity would enable us to grow more quickly than at home.” He said the company, which has 18 stores across Australia, would be adopting a “learn as we go” approach. Asked what he meant by this he said: “We have always been specialist retailers, so hopefully we understand the business as well as anyone. But we’re not trying to come to the UK saying we know how it all works.”
He added: “We didn’t just make this move for the retailing business. The Authentic business was interesting to us. I don’t think we would have taken one without the other - and of course I include wesleyowen.com as part of the retailing acquisition. Clearly that was also a very important part of the picture.”
Phil Burnham – CLC
Phil Burnham, UK Director, of CLC International, told us that things were “going well. We’ve taken on some good people and the HR and Finance people at STL have been fantastic.”
One of the potential barriers to the acquisition would have been CLC UK’s policy on emeploying salaried staff but as Burnham explained: “We made a change to our constitution last year, allowing us to pay people, which brought us into line with what we do in the rest of the world. We did it because we needed to find more people to work with us in our bookshops – but maybe the Lord knew something we didn’t!”
As now the largest chain of Christian bookshops in the UK there are many challenges to face, “mainly internal” said Burnham. “We have to integrate the new shops into the group, integrate procedures, administration processes and the staff too. We want to avoid the ‘us and them’ scenario.” He added: “I have been so encouraged by the comments and feedback I’ve received from the staff have taken on; they’re right with us.
As to the mission he said: “We’re still holding fast to our four core values, people are still coming to faith on our bookshops. We need to raise the profile of CLC as a mission and these additional bookshops will help us to do that.”
“We’re there to sell books,” said Burnham, “but we are also there to bring people into the kingdom and feed them into the local churches. If we achieve that then hopefully they’ll remember us and buy their books from us and not from Amazon.”
Ken Munro – John Ritchie Ltd.
Ken Munro, Managing Director of John Ritchie Ltd. said that the acquisition was “certainly unanticipated. We were looking to drive exponential growth but I didn’t quite anticipate the level of growth that we would drive. The speed has been interesting and challenging but I’m very encouraged.”
He added that: “There is a well of loyalty, empathy, sympathy, within the trade which has certainly come back to me; people have emailed me personally and the level of support for STL-D as a business has been very encouraging.”
"There seems to be a recognition that a strong distribution business in Carlisle is essential," sain Munro. “The general feedback has been that a focused distribution business is good, i.e. not the vertically integrated empire that existed historically. We’re now running hard to do simple things –I’m not rolling out, a grandiose strategic vision at the moment, I’m re-stabilising the business."
Commenting on the systems issue, which bedevilled IBS-STL UK in Carlisle, he confirmed that SAP was no more. “Obviously the business ran off Informix for many years in a very stable fashion and with IBM’s acquisition of Informix there is investment in the long-term for the platform.
“What we are looking for is a significant period of operational stability and, quite frankly, Informix can not only give us the stability but can also the management information reporting which is essential for us and for our customers.”
Asked about integration of the two businesses Munro said: “We are going to run the businesses in parallel for a significant period of time. As we see stability, as we get the basics right with STL-D, we’ll look at some of the synergies and the integration benefits. But that’s not something we anticipate doing immediately.
“I think there is a bright future for STL-D. I bring some new thinking to it, some creative ways of doing business. I hope to work with the retail trade to support them. And the big difference is that we are a distributor, not a retailer, so we are a very strong fit for them as partners.”
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