Product Coding Committee

Committee Purpose:

• To assist consumers in navigating book departments at retail stores and to navigate electronic catalogs or the World Wide Web to make purchasing decisions.
• To set standard category codes for all publishers and retailers in an effort to reduce the cost and improve the efficiencies of doing business for the entire industry.

The Product Coding Committee is a standing CRSC committee. Its goals aim to develop standardized industry methods and improve industry product-coding practices to create most-efficient and cost-effective business operations for all trading partners. A guiding principle is to align Christian Retail Channel codes and standards with general business-commerce standards. Additionally, the committee will guide standards development where no general business-commerce standards exist.

Recent accomplishments:

• Completed the Bible category-coding and book category-coding transition that both now align with the publishing industry's BISAC schema with transition Jan. 1, 2008.

Current issues under consideration include:

• Developing a Gift Book category-coding system
• Improving Kids Christian Product Category coding
• Developing a category coding best-practices document for publishers, suppliers, and retailers

This committee is open to those who have an interest in improving product-category coding to help retailers provide better customer service, merchandising, and inventory management while giving suppliers tools for more effective product development and improved production and logistics capabilities. We welcome your ideas and want to hear about your needs in this area.

Chairwoman:

Leslie Mosher, Zondervan

Leslie.Mosher@Zondervan.com