It’s Not Easy Being Big

Comma Crazy

“I’ve got a lot of changes,” said the cataloger.

I sighed. We’d already been through countless rounds and sent files to the color house very late. And the cataloger still was making changes. Color costs were soaring. I got out my red pen. “Ready for your changes,” I said.

“OK,” said the cataloger, “in the first sentence, third word, remove the comma before the word ‘and’ ... “

One nice thing about smaller catalogs is that often they’re run by entrepreneurs who are pretty good at distinguishing between things that matter and things that don’t.

But as a catalog company grows, actual production of the book often drifts into the hands of people lower down in the organization. At that point, grammatical issues tend to rear their heads.

I don’t know why this is so, but people at and below the mid-management level often have a passion for persnickety rules of grammar. You’ll know when this happens, because your catalog will start having more proofing rounds, and the changes mostly will involve commas, semicolons, colons and the like. This process may continue deep into the color-house stage, during which costs can spiral upwards.

The rules of grammar are quite flexible (my favorite reference is “American Usage and Style: The Consensus” by Roy Copperud). In advertising copy, the goal is to be clear, not necessarily to follow obscure rules.

The solution: As your catalog program grows, watch for rising color and design costs due to middle managers focusing on wayward grammatical issues.

Custom All the Way

A few years ago, a major marketer created a new mail-order catalog. A smaller firm would’ve bought off-the-shelfcatalog-management software. But this company’s IT department felt the honor of the firm demanded that they reinvent the wheel by writing their own proprietary catalog-management software. (By the way, they knew nothing about cataloging.)

Two years later, with costs deep into seven figures, the whole thing suddenly was abandoned, all programming erased.

Most small and mid-sized catalogers simply install off-the-shelf catalog-management software, and change their operational processes to meet the software’s defaults and requirements.

But as catalogers grow, the siren song of “custom software” becomes more tempting. It’s partly because, as you grow, changing your internal processes to fit a new software package becomes harder — there’s so much more to change. Wouldn’t it be easier just to pay for customizations, or even for an entirely custom-written package, so your software would work exactly your way?

Well, not always. Before committing to custom software modifications, know the downsides. Generally, such modifications don’t comprise a one-time expense — you must have them re-done each time the manufacturer upgrades your underlying standard software package.

And custom modifications can be buggy, too. After all, for custom modifications you’re the first user, the guinea pig. Any errors or unintended side effects will show up in your operation.

The solution: Before committing to custom software, determine if a “work-around” solution can accomplish the same result.

Mr. Successful

A well-known national cataloger finally had grown large enough to hire a first-rate CEO, the kind of leader capable of bringing high-level thinking to a company that had been stodgy for decades.

At first the new CEO really seemed to deliver: hob-nobbing with legislators, buying competitive companies and attracting outside talent to the executive team.

The trouble was the new CEO’s thinking never descended from the clouds long enough to deal with boring old operations — which finally collapsed and brought down the whole company.

After years of being unable to pay enough to hold really good talent, small and mid-sized catalogers often feel the gates of heaven have opened when they finally can attract and hold top-rank talent.

But hiring such people is like anything else in business: If you haven’t done it before, you may do it badly the first few times.

The solution: As you find yourself hiring stronger candidates, don’t let their dazzling personalities convince you to abandon the basic elements that have made you a success so far. The mere fact that you’ve grown to a size capable of attracting superior talent means you’re already doing many things right.

Keep doing them — at least until your high-powered new managers prove to you that a better way is possible and practical.

Fire Them All

After the Christmas rush, I phoned my catalog client to get started on the next book.

“Sorry, she’s no longer with this firm,” said the secretary.

So I asked for my secondary contact. “Gone, too,” came the reply.

“How about G-?” I asked. “Or R-? B-? V-?”

“Actually, they fired the entire marketing department,” she said.

Small to mid-sized catalog companies tend to have reasonably stable management, often because an entrepreneur still is actively involved.

But as a catalog business grows, such stability often declines, because the company is creating a growing layer of middle managers. And middle managers have many instabilities to deal with: They’re easily laid off when financial reverses occur, and they’re always eager for promotion when times are good.

The result? A catalog that’s had management consistency in its earlier days begins seeing major management inconsistency as it becomes big. For a cataloger, that’s a bad scenario.

Successful cataloging depends on multi-year selling to the same people. Frequent upheavals within the ranks of hands-on managers can undercut a catalog’s brand consistency, because each new manager re-creates the book to match his or her own ideas.

The solution: As your catalog grows, think about how to keep its messages consistent despite higher turnover in the people who are actually creating the catalog or overseeing its creation.

Failing to do so risks turning your book into another one of those sad catalogs that had a clear voice and appeal once upon a time, but that today have become just mechanical exercises that speak to no one.

What Does the Janitor Think?

A prominent U.S. cataloger recently performed a major repositioning of its catalog to distinguish itself from “me-too” catalogers that had invaded its niche. By actual split testing, the repositioned book earned double-digit higher sales.

Throughout the repositioning process, all of the top people in the firm actively participated in every detail — copy, design and merchandise.

After the new positioning became company policy, though, the top people turned to other things. Soon, a small group of newly hired assistants fresh out of college were managing all creative details. Within a year, every element of the repositioning had vanished, and the book’s creative had returned to its former state.

In a small company, the guiding spirit at the top (often, but not always, an entrepreneur) represents an enormous percentage of the total staffing of the firm. For example, in a 10-person firm, the sole proprietor at the top is 10 percent of the entire staff.

But as a company grows, the guiding spirit becomes a smaller fraction of the whole. As a result, changes become harder to create and maintain.

The solution: As your catalog operation grows, be prepared to spend more time communicating to your staff the unique standards that make your catalog great. Never get so busy with high strategy and high finance that you stop looking at what’s actually being mailed.

Susan J. McIntyre is president of McIntyre Direct, a full-service catalog agency and consulting firm based in Portland, OR. She can be reached at (503) 286-1400.