Top brokers describe today’s challenging catalog list market

Catalog Success: Please describe for us the current market for catalog lists.

Belardi: It is very limited. Simply put, there are less and less new catalogs entering the market that are building substantial housefiles, and that translates to fewer new catalog lists for prospecting.

Bogner: There’s a 20-percent cutback on what mailers are sending right now. So they’re ordering fewer lists. This is typical after a postal increase. Even though it wasn’t huge, it was when the economy was sliding, so mailers took it as a sign to trim their mail plans. I suspect some people may try to make it up in the fourth quarter.