Hey there, this is Phil Visher. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm here with everybody. Again, this will not be a solo podcast. So those of you who are fans of solo podcasts, rejoice.

We're here with Skye Jitani. Hi Skye. Hey Phil. And Christian Taylor. Hey there Phil. Did you beep? I was, I think it was your watch. Top of the hour. So that was your watch saying time for the podcast. Right. Time for the podcast. We're all back together.

Everyone's been all over the place, but we're all back together now. So it's time to sing theme song with ukulele, not optional.

Hey, it's a podcast. What do you know? Hey, it's a podcast. So there's no video. Hey, it's a podcast. So lend an ear. The Phil Visher podcast starts right here.

We'll talk to Skye and Christian to and maybe a guest, but we don't have one today for you. Hey, it's a podcast.

So lend an ear. The Phil Visher podcast starts right here. The Phil Visher podcast starts right here.

Okay. Everyone's back. We're here. I was first topic. I last week was the Christian booksellers association annual convention,

which used to be called CBA, but that's named the organization. So they changed the name of the convention to ICRS. Do you guys know what that stands for?

International Christian retailers show show. Hey, very good, except it's retail, not retailers, but that's okay. Okay, you were really close to nine out of 10.

Or and that it was the biggest used because the CBA show and it was it's a trade show fairly large in the mid 90s to late 90s.

It was quite large and that was kind of the peak of veggie tails. And it's kind of shrinking. It's you can also call it the incredible shrinking trade show, which is to have a lot of trade shows.

A lot of the trade show business in general has been shrinking since a lot of things have gone online, and especially when you sell things, for example, there used to be, you know, 2000 independent Christian retailers.

And so they all would go to trade shows to buy things to place orders, and that is shrunk significantly. And now there's, I don't know, maybe 400 independent Christian retailers because the chains have kind of taken over.

And when you have chains in any market, they tend not to buy at trade shows, you go to them and sell to them. Walmart does not come to a trade show to order things.

People go to Walmart to buy. And so that's happened in the Christian market, but there's a bigger trend that I think is is more interesting in that we see.

We had a generation with veggie tails of parents that especially moms that were in the habit of going to Christian bookstores to look for stuff, you know, stuff that they heard about on the radio from James Thompson or somebody like that.

And then they would go to a Christian bookstore and there were Christian bookstores everywhere. And they would go and find the stuff and give it to their kids.

And we seem to have a new generation that doesn't do that anymore that they find enough on TV that they're comfortable with or they'll find things online that they're comfortable with and the younger generation doesn't of parents.

The new generation of parents doesn't seem to go to Christian bookstores. Have you noticed that guy in your travails? I am a younger Christian parent.

And you go to 36 still young. Yes. You go to Christian bookstores once a month. Never once.

You have young kids. Never. But you know what I was and one of those older Christian moms because my oldest is 20 young Christian.

Yes. So I was 20. My oldest is 22. My youngest is 10. And I don't remember the last time I stopped going to the grocery store for a long time and had Peapod deliver my grocery store.

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