Management

"Are consumers afraid to spend, or just broke?” So asked the heading of a recent New York Times letter to the editor. If your business is still struggling to overcome the disaster that was last year — one of the worst economic meltdowns in living memory — you need to focus even more on restructuring, cutting costs and, yes, laying people off if you want to recover and survive.

This month, we bring you the second in our exclusive quarterly reporting of Abacus Consumer Co-op data, the Quarterly Catalog Success/Abacus Consumer Co-op Data Report.

Selecting software for order management or warehouse management systems, e-commerce solutions, or other applications is a challenging task. The process begins by documenting a set of requirements, constructing a request for proposal (RFP), identifying vendors, viewing Web demos, and conducting site visits and reference checks. But a trend is emerging to select vendors based on word-of-mouth recommendations and two-hour Web demos. The question is, is that really the right approach?

This month we profile Jason Blake, the 31-year-old founder/president of the The Pond Guy, a catalog/multichannel retailer of pond, lake and water garden supplies.

This month, Margaret Moraskie, vice president of e-commerce for women’s apparel cataloger Boston Proper, discusses her life in the catalog, retail and online trades.

Pan American Develop-ment Foundation (PADF): This nonprofit organization that creates public-private partnerships to assist disadvantaged people in Latin America and the Caribbean has launched a print catalog of corporate social responsibility and cause-related marketing opportunities in those regions. The 28-page book provides an overview of PADF projects that are well-suited for private-sector participation.

Fresh off the sale of their last turnaround project — the reinvigorated J&L Industrial Supply to MSC Industrial Direct in June 2006 — Chuck Moyer and Mike Wessner set their sights on a new opportunity. After an exhaustive search process, these two B-to-B cataloging lifers targeted 63-year-old Conney Safety Products. In a deal financed by the private equity firm CI Capital, Moyer and Wessner acquired the company from its parent firm, K+K America, in October 2007.

Our entire interview with industry veteran Brendan Edgerton, including what he believes the catalog industry must do to remain relevant in these uncertain times

Professionally, Lynda Swann will never be another Eddie Smith. Then again, she won’t have to be. The support system her father fostered and nurtured during his 50-plus years running the women’s hosiery and apparel catalog National Wholesale Co. runs so seamlessly that Swann handles her role as president with relative ease.

Like many entrepreneurs who launched catalog businesses in bygone eras, the late Eddie Smith, whom I had the pleasure of knowing during the ’90s and early 2000s, stuck firmly to a number of ironclad principles during his 50-plus years at the helm of the National Wholesale catalog.