A True Multichannel Experience

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Catalog Success: The Corner View. Coming to you directly from the keyboard of Catalog Success editor in chief Paul Miller, this fortnightly e-newsletter will reach your inbox every other Friday.

In all of our channels — the monthly print magazine, the weekly Idea Factory e-newsletter and our daily Web site — Catalog Success’ mantra is to provide you with moneymaking ideas that can help you run your catalog/multichannel business better. Always on the lookout for new products that we can offer our readers, we bring you this executive report with analysis and reflections on the catalog/multichannel business, specifically targeted at high-level executives. Each edition will focus on specific events, issues or other matters of interest to you, our readers, and how they may affect you.

For my first report, I thought I’d share a true multichannel experience with you. Not just any multichannel experience, but one that truly brought together catalog, retail and Web all at once.

In mid-December, my wife dragged me to the Danbury (Connecticut) Fair Mall located near my home in Westchester County, N.Y., to do some holiday shopping. She brought her Lands’ End catalog along with her, because she wanted to comb through the Sears store to see if it had some of the Lands’ End items. This way, she wouldn’t have to wait for them to be shipped.

A brief backgrounder on Sears-Lands’ End: Sears acquired Lands’ End in 2002. From that day on, people questioned how the two could co-exist. Within a few months after the acquisition, Sears began offering a limited number of Lands’ End products in its stores. I often cringed when I went into Sears stores, because there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for where it basically dumped the Lands’ End items. One area could have a selection of Lands’ End polo shirts, the next could have some low-end, polyester-laden Sears proprietary brand of shirts.