BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:Lights out for Lighthouse store

For more than 40 years, the Lighthouse Christian Store has been a staple of the Christian community in Glendale. Stocked with rows of Biblical literature, Christian music CDs and a wide array of specialty gifts, the Orange Street store is a quiet haven for religious shoppers. But not for long.

Due in part to diminishing sales, the shop will close its doors to Glendale on March 15.

“It’s very sad,” said Mark Bingle, owner of Lighthouse Christian Stores. “We’ve been there a long time in Glendale.”

Lighthouse Christian Store first set roots in Glendale in 1967 at Broadway and Brand Boulevard — where Mervyns is now — and has moved within city limits twice since then, first just two blocks north on Brand and then to its current Orange location, where it’s lasted 25 years, store manager Jan Blessing-Ellis said.

Along with stores in Long Beach, Orange and Pasadena, the Glendale store is one of four Southern California locations in the independently owned chain. And though the Glendale store is the only location slated to close, sales at the other locations are “just OK,” Bingle said.

Bingle attributed the diminishing sales to the same force that has squeezed other independent bookstores across the country: the rise of corporate book chains like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

“It’s been very hard for Christian stores across the nation,” Bingle said. “What’s happened is they’ve been cherry-picking our popular products, which have helped [us] pay for the products you won’t find in those stores. What we compete in is service and selection.”

Blessing-Ellis, who has managed the store ever since it moved to Orange, said that in addition to declining book sales, Christian CD sales have been hit hard by the increased availability of religious music online.

“Some people think, ‘Why come in and buy the whole CD when I can just download the two songs that I want?’” she said.

Yet, despite the financial difficulty it imposes on small outlets like the Lighthouse Christian Store, Bingle said that the growing inventory of religious literature at corporate suppliers does have a plus side.

“The good thing is that Christian books are ending up in secular stores,” Bingle said.

And still, Blessing-Ellis believes there will always be a demand for small niche shops like the Lighthouse Christian Stores.

“If people need guidance, they want to talk to somebody, somebody who knows about [religious literature], we provide that,” she said. “Personal service is something you don’t get at the big-bucks stores.”

Personal service is what kept customers like June Cunningham coming back to the Lighthouse Christian Store.

“This has been like home,” Cunningham said. “We know the clerks, they know us, it’s just so sad. There isn’t another Christian bookstore in Glendale. I suppose I’ll go to Pasadena.”