A Chat With July’s Profile, Doug Mockett, founder/owner of Doug Mockett & Co.

Catalog Success: Where’s the company headquartered?
Doug Mockett: It’s physically located in Torrance, California.

CS: When was the company established?
DM: In early 1981.

CS: When were the first catalogs mailed?
DM: We got into the mailing of the catalog, it had to be about two years later. It wasn’t so much a catalog as it was a single-sheet flyer; mainly because I only had one product at the time and had no money.

CS: What was the one product that you were selling at the time?
DM: Grommets, wire access grommets. We just had basically two different sizes and two different colors.

CS: What are your customer demographics?
DM: Well, our customers are major office furniture manufacturers, they’re large- and mid-sized mill workshops, which are the people who do custom interiors for banks, law firms, board rooms, audio/visual, that type of stuff. And then a whole host of little, small cabinet shops. And then we have another huge market that we don’t sell to but they specify our parts to go into the furnishings of the buildings they’re designing, and that’s architects and designers.

CS: Do you strictly sell B-to-B?
DM: Not really. I mean, we sell to anyone who calls and places an order, but it’s 99 and nine-tenths percent B-to-B.

CS: What’s the primary merchandise you offer?
DM: The main thing we offer and sell are components for office and computer furniture. And that consists of table legs; drawer pulls; innovative components to integrate computers into furniture; a whole line of wire access grommets and wire management, which are the channels to channel wires after they go through the hole in the desk. And the last few years we’ve added a line of components for the kitchen, bath and closet. It is, I think, at the moment 2,500 SKUs.

CS: What’s your overall SKU count?
DM: I’d say at around 2,500. It’s actually 2,422, but 2,500 will do.

CS: Are all of those products offered in the catalog?
DM: Oh sure. Everything is in there and everything is on our Web site online as well.

CS: How many times is the catalog mailed per year?
DM: That’s an interesting question because we have a major catalog, it’s almost 300 pages, and we try to update it once every two years. And we’ve fallen behind … badly. We’re getting our new 2009 catalog, which will go out the day after Labor Day. The last catalog, full-line, we did was in 2004. We put in new software and it didn’t work; not catalog, but B-to-B, accounting and order-taking and all that. That didn’t work. It put us a year out, and we didn’t see any point in sending in a catalog with a huge influx of inquiries we get and have this crappy software. What we’ve done, though, is issue about every six months a 30- to 40-page what we call “Innovations,” which is all of the new products we’ve added in the prior six months.

CS: And that’s mailed about twice a year?
DM: Yeah. Probably twice a year, every eight months. Something like that. When we’ve got enough products to make it worthwhile to do.

CS: What’s the sales breakdown between the catalog and online channels?
DM: The orders come in via fax and e-mail — we have about 15 people who take orders full-time. I think probably 10 percent to 15 percent of our overall orders are from the Web site. Having said that, what we find and I’m sure you would agree, we find a lot of people go to the Web site to do their research and then order later. Or maybe they’ll use us for comparison and order from somebody else.

CS: So the Web now accounts for about 15 percent of your total sales?
DM: Right, and that 15 percent has been growing pretty dramatically the last couple of years.

CS: How many employees work for the company?
DM: About 60.

CS: What’s the catalog’s circulation?
DM: We print and mail just around 100,000.

CS: How did you get your start in the catalog business?
DM: I majored in English in college and then got an M.B.A. in marketing and a minor in management and worked in the advertising business for quite a while. The thing that was really frustrating with the ad biz., I don’t care what anybody says, it’s really hard to measure return on an ad. I noticed working for ad agencies that when things didn’t go well you were a goat, and when things went well the client was a hero. You’re kind of stuck in this neverland of never being able to take credit for anything. The client always took the credit.
And I’d been interested in direct marketing for some time — I read a couple of books on it. My first entry into it was I wrote a book and sold it mail order through ads. It was pretty successful. Then I sold the venture and got into the furniture components business. My first thought was that nobody would be interested in distributing these parts. These are an ideal direct marketing part. So I started with press releases because, honestly, I was absolutely flat broke. Started with press releases, then ran some ads and then printed single-sheets with the product and mailed them out. And then maybe a four-page, then eight-, then 12- and now we’ve got a 300-page catalog.

CS: Development was gradual over the years?
DM: Yes. We got some money.

CS: What was your biggest challenge when you broke into the catalog business?
DM: Lasting the course until this thing turned the corner. After I made the first sale, my wife, Sonia, who is an architectural space planner, said, “You know, everybody in the furniture biz needs these grommets.” I thought she was crazy. She insisted, so I wrote a direct marketing letter and sent a sample of the grommet with the letter to 400 furniture manufacturers, to the presidents of 400 furniture makers. And I got about, I’m not kidding, I couldn’t believe it, 185 phone calls. I go, “Oh my God, this is incredible.” So I knew there was something there, it was just a matter of hoping I could tread water till the thing turned the corner. And it took about 18 months and it turned the corner, and it’s been all on the up since then. It’s amazing. Started in early ’81 and I remember Christmas of ’82 is when it worked out.

CS: What are today’s challenges in producing a catalog?
DM: The challenges in producing the catalog are basically the same — getting quality photography, getting a great layout, getting some good writing. I do all the writing, I write it all. And I’ve got an art lady who is brilliant and she does all the art, the layout, gets all the photography done.

CS: Is all of your production handled in-house?
DM: We have a guy who does the photography outside, but we do all the writing and the layout, getting it all done in-house. The challenge for us is really being able to get out the catalog on a timely basis, to tell you the truth. It’s a big challenge and we haven’t been so good at it. We haven’t noticed it in the sales, so I mean it’s, “Alright, why spend a million dollars when you don’t have to.”

CS: Have you done anything in particular to try and offset the rising costs of mailing a catalog?
DM: We’ve been very lazy about updating our mailing list and we’ve spent the last two years going through it with a fine-tooth comb and with mailings and mailings of like a postcard or a letter or something, and just getting it all straightened out. We now feel pretty comfortable that our return rate will be way low.

CS: Have there been any changes to the actual size of the catalog?
DM: It’s basically a magazine size of seven by 10. The printer said, “Look, if you make this I believe just a hair shorter you can get more [postal discounts] on it.” So it shrunk by like a sixteenth of an inch either way.

CS: What are the factors that have led to your company’s success?
DM: The first thing that we have is absolutely fantastic customer service. Our people are empowered to do whatever it takes to get an order to somebody. And if that means it needs to go overnight, and let’s say we’ve screwed it up, out it goes and we don’t care. So they’re empowered to make decisions that I don’t think you’d find common in other companies. We have fantastic customer service.
We’ve always maintained a large inventory, so we ship something like 98 percent of the orders the same day. So if we were financially-oriented, we’d have a skinny inventory and you’d have to wait. But we’re not, we’re marketing-oriented.
We’ve got good customer service, absolutely fabulous, good inventory and we have a catalog that engages you. We’re selling dull industrial furniture components. We’ve made the catalog with a lot of human interest — a lot of personal stories and a lot of stories about my dogs that drag the readers in, for example. It’s on slick paper, coated stock; it’s not just a catalog of line drawings and part number and blah, blah, blah and the dimensions and that’s it. I think that helps. Trust me, the customer service and the people we have working are absolutely fabulous.
The other thing we do is we stand behind the products 100 percent, which I learned from L.L. Bean. You can send it back anytime, we pay the freight, no restocking charge. All we ask is that it’s returned in resalable condition.

CS: What do you enjoy most about the catalog/multichannel business?
DM: What I enjoy is the challenge of it. I enjoy writing it … I do a lot of the new product development, enjoying seeing the trends where things are going in our industry. For example, dark brown finish you never saw. Now a lot of people are looking for dark browns. So we stay on top of what we anticipate or what we see are new trends. We do our best to grab a hold of them and run with them. The biggest challenge is staying a step ahead — keeping your catalog fresh and engaging.

CS: Looking back at your career, what are one or two of the biggest mistakes you’ve made along the way?
DM: Probably the biggest mistake we’ve made is not expanding the product line soon enough. We stumbled along with the grommets and the wire managers for quite a while. It wasn’t till the late ’80s, early 1990s that we branched out into other components — table legs, drawer pulls and then components to integrate computers into furniture. So we kind of were, “We’re doing great just selling these grommets and this is great.” We decided that we were doing so well with this, why not move into some other stuff? And gee, the other stuff worked. Well, let’s move into some other stuff. It all seems to work pretty well.

CS: Than you believe you could’ve been successful with an expanded product assortment sooner than you offered one?
DM: Much quicker, basically right off the bat.

CS: What year did you expand your assortment to include products other than grommets?
DM: Three or four years [from the start of the company in 1981].

CS: What sets your company apart from its competition?
DM: First of all, we don’t really have much competition because our aim is at the upper end of the furniture industry, with top quality design and top quality manufacture and top price. There’s no bargains. As I’ve said, the customer service has set us apart by a long ways. It helps us stay head-and-shoulders above everybody else.

CS: If you hadn’t gotten involved in the catalog/multichannel industry, what do you think you would have done for a career?
DM: I have no idea. I was in the advertising and marketing business, and I suspect I’d still be doing that for somebody. I had my own promotional firm and I did a lot of marketing and promotion for car races and motorcycle races and for new product offerings, so I suspect I would just carry on in that line.

CS: What’s done at the company to keep a fun and light-hearted work environment?
DM: We have an award that goes to the outstanding person of the year; anyone, the warehouse, the management, the customer service people can all be eligible. Last year, two customer service people won. They’re both fabulous. We do that … any excuse for a party. We have a lot of Mexicans, we always have a Cinco de Mayo party with a mariachi band.
A couple of the other things that seem to help keep everybody more than happy is we pay more than 90 percent of you and your family’s medical care, health insurance. We pay education … you want to go to college, we’ll pay for that. We have almost an unlimited vacation policy. It used to be very liberal, just basically take what you need, but we’ve kind of formalized it lately. But it’s still pretty good. We have a company paid retirement plan that seems to work out pretty well. All of these and we try to create an environment where you can make a mistake and your head’s not going to get chopped off. Take a risk because we all make mistakes, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

CS: Have you had any mentors or been a mentor to anyone over the course of your career?
DM: I had a mentor who was an entrepreneur, not in the direct marketing business, but he’s done it all. He was really, really brilliant and a good friend of mine. He just had tons of good advice, just incredible. Really good advice. He was an entrepreneur. In fact, he claims he got out of high school and he never had a job. He went to work for himself right away.

CS: What’s his name?
DM: Michael Kasino.

CS: What hobbies do you enjoy away from work?
DM: I race old cars and I fly planes.

CS: Do you do those on a regular basis?
DM: A very regular basis. Last weekend I was racing in Monaco. Every year they have a historic grand prix and I had two cars, one for me, one for a friend of mine. My car broke in practice and his won the big event. It was really great seeing him up there getting a trophy from Prince Albert. It was cool. I race all over the world, all year-round. It’s just great.
The other thing that I do is I mentor young and up-and-coming race drivers. And that’s really rewarding because I’ve got a bunch of kids that I’ve helped out over the years, including this guy who drove my car Sunday in Monaco, Paul Edwards. It’s really great to see them grow. Paul, for example, is a driver for General Motors and he’s racing sports cars for GM. It’s great. That part’s very rewarding because you find these kids that are bright and very talented, but there’s no where to go to get guidance. They appreciate any hint you can give them. It works out pretty well and it’s great fun.

CS: Is this done strictly in California?
DM: Do it all over. In California; I flew to Kansas a month or three weeks ago to see a kid win a race in the support series for the Indy Cars, called Indy Light, just a step below them. It was his second oval race and he won it … he did a great job. And all of this is through a group called Team USA. Team USA scholarship — we provide racing cars and mentoring. The main thing we provide a series, we raise money for them to race in Europe. Primarily, aside from the money, the mentoring really is the bigger deal.

CS: And you fly planes as well?
DM: Yeah, I got a small jet.

CS: Is there anything about yourself that isn’t well known that would be a surprise to those who know you?
DM: Not that I can think of. Just a boring old man, frankly. We really stress customer service. We mention it in the catalog and we live it and breathe it. I’ve had people call, “This order is late, blah, blah, blah.” We haven’t done it lately, but, “Where are you located?” “I’m in Chicago.” “I’ll be there in three hours.” Fly the guy’s order. “Can you meet me at the airport, I’ll be there.” “You got to be kidding?” “No, I’m not kidding.” I mean 10 years ago UPS went on strike and everyday I’d fly all over the Western U.S. and deliver orders.

CS: With your commitment to customer service, have you seen a real loyalty among your customers?
DM: Yes. Customer loyalty comes from the service, but also from the quality design and the quality products. They’re all modern contemporary components and that really seems to help as well. They really love it.