Special Report: The Three Ps - Beyond the Status Quo

Eddie Bauer opened its first retail store, Eddie Bauer’s Sport Shop, in Seattle in 1920.

Just two years after the founding, the company established its creed: “To give you outstanding quality, value, service and a guarantee that we may be worthy of your high esteem.”

To this day, the promise manifests throughout the organization, including production and manufacturing.

The Eddie Bauer conglomeration consists of eddiebauer.com, eddiebauerhome.com, eddiebaueroutlet.com, a network of almost 600 retail stores (based in the United States, Canada, Germany and Japan) and a highly successful catalog division.

During the course of the company’s more than 80-year history, it has celebrated some significant catalog milestones, including publishing its first mail-order catalog in 1945. By 1987, with the Eddie Bauer name well known by the home-shopping public and millions of retail-site fans, the company broadened its catalog offerings to include All Week Long, featuring classically styled fashions for special occasions and professionals. This title’s name later was changed to AKA Eddie Bauer. In 1991 Eddie Bauer Home was added to its stable of titles. Germany began receiving Eddie Bauer catalogs in 1993, followed by Japan in 1994.

Today, Eddie Bauer’s 44 home and apparel catalog titles (representing a total annual print run of more than 123 million pages circulated for home and apparel product lines) are produced at R.R. Donnelley & Son’s Warsaw, IN, plant. Covers are produced on offset presses, while the guts of the books are printed on gravure machines that are better suited for the extra-long runs.

Evaluating the “How” of Catalog Production

Larisa Sheckler joined Eddie Bauer as a business systems analyst about 10 years ago. Admittedly, she says, she didn’t know much about graphic arts when she started out. “But it was always the process that I loved—figuring out how to use technology to do things better.”

Sheckler’s affinity for technology and process drew her to production and manufacturing, and eventually she was charged with her current role, director of operations. When asked about her daily responsibilities, Sheckler simply explains, “I own the ‘how.’”

More specifically, Sheckler oversees Eddie Bauer’s project management team, which ensures that every project that comes into creative services gets executed on time, within budget and with the utmost quality. She also manages the publishing systems team.

But Sheckler’s primary responsibility—which happens to be the part of her job she most adores—is continually identifying new production technologies and best practices. She’s particularly excited about two new solutions that promise to streamline the process and create a more efficient workflow—digital content management and remote proofing.

With the goal of better managing product information and images, Eddie Bauer currently is implementing Pindar Systems’ CMS (Content Management System) version 3.3. This comprehensive asset management system offers a number of attractive productivity features. Each asset can be allocated with up to 20 user-defined attributes. Catalog designers can use the system’s page-builder component to search and place objects within templated pages, and asset filters can be deployed to better manage different versions of images that may be destined for print or online.

Pindar Systems’ executives say they have more than 75 worldwide installations of the catalog commerce system, including blue-chip customers such as Office Depot, W.W. Grainger and Williams-Sonoma.

“It was actually Spiegel that found Pindar,” Sheckler recalls. (Spiegel, Eddie Bauer and NNI are owned by a single holding company, Spiegel Holdings Inc.) “We saw it and really liked how it handled copy and how it managed product hierarchy. Pindar, by far, handled those better than any other solution we’d seen. … And when we finally decided to start some discussions with them, we were very impressed with their leadership and how they genuinely understood where we wanted to go with asset management.”

Once fully implemented, Pindar’s CMS will act as a tri-channel repository for content, feeding not only catalog production but also the Web and retail products. Because the solution is best suited for managing assets and not for rendering content to the Web, Sheckler says that additional content management tools will need to be integrated with Pindar’s CMS to populate Eddie Bauer’s sites.

“How you prepare content for the Web is very different than for a catalog,” she explains, “and up to this point, there isn’t one single asset management solution that handles all three channels seamlessly. Pindar appears to recognize this—another reason why we like to have them as partners—and are going down that road. I expect the new version may handle Web-type content better, allowing us to use it fully in our production and creative content workflow.”

Eddie Bauer also has plans to implement Pindar’s production advisor module that will enable the cataloger to electronically plan, track and report on the production status of its titles.

The Promise of Proofing

Another area of production that is seemingly ripe for tweaking is proofing, Sheckler explains—specifically, soft and remote proofing. She learned of a relatively new technology developer, Prolatus, through her contacts at R.R. Donnelley.

Prolatus is the creator of a Web-based software technology that facilitates the rapid exchange of digital files for proofing. Its MarkUp tool was created to streamline the approval process, allowing print partners to quickly share digital files that can be evaluated on a monitor during creative stages or sent to each partner’s digital proofing device for hard-copy output during production and prepress.

“We’ve seen one demo of it,” Sheckler explains, “and it looks like a good idea—offering us another way to practice digital workflow.” Still, Sheckler is quick to say that while Prolatus may allow Eddie Bauer to complement its current proofing practices, it’s not likely that a digital remote or soft proof will ever fully replace Kodak Approvals (digital halftone proofs) for color-critical work.

“I’m not a fan of doing something new just to do it—and at the possible risk of sacrificing quality. We’ll continue to mark up Kodak Approvals. And the truth is that contract soft proofing may be a long way off just because of comfort level and the differences between RGB monitors and CMYK [printing presses].”

Eddie Bauer’s approach to technology may be defined as cautious but open-minded. As Sheckler points out, it’s foolish for catalogers to simply grasp onto a new tool unless it can fulfill promises to enable those three familiar words: “better, faster, cheaper.”