Management

Whether your catalog company is at $10 million or $150 million in revenue, there are questions about the key metrics of cataloging and Web marketing you should ask yourself — and know where and how to find answers — if you expect to regularly generate above-average profits. Here are the key areas; some are in the form of questions that I use when helping direct marketers prepare their strategic plans, raise growth financing or sell part or all of their business. Merchandising Q1. Describe your merchandising and buying function. Is it a “one-man show?” Q2. Who attends trade shows, makes overseas sourcing trips, selects final products? Is

Catalog Success: What are your catalog’s customer demographics? Sue Prenner: Professional men over the age of 45, but we’re trying to get younger. Bob Prenner: We’re in sort of a niche market for people who like traditional clothing. Sue: We like to say that it’s classic style and so for a long time the only people who recognized classic style were people who would be in that age demographic. But now it’s becoming fashionable, so they’re people who have never seen classic style before who are interested in it. But our price point is high so its going to appeal to the same

Say what you will about this wonderful trade we call the catalog/multichannel business, but whichever way you spin it, you can’t go very far if you’re unprofitable. That’s why above all else — the marketing, the merchandising, the creative, the e-commerce, etc. — we’re most interested in helping our readers make more money. So we bring you our annual binge of tactics and tips extracted from all of this year’s issues of Catalog Success, our weekly e-newsletter Idea Factory and our biweekly idea exchange e-newsletter, The Corner View. Our editorial staff went through every article we’ve produced this year to give you a nice,

For as long as I can remember, legislation that would either lead to a law similar to the “do-not-call” law or that would require mailers to get consumers’ approval before sending them catalogs has been like one of those disasters you only see in the movies or TV. It could never happen in real life, no way. There often have been flashes of “do-not-mail” bill proposals, but nothing has ever become of it. Such a law is one of the biggest reasons American catalogers don’t try to mail in countries like Italy and parts of China, both of which specifically require prior consent

When visiting client companies I’m often astounded by the variation I find in how they view and treat their vendors.

Too many B-to-B catalogers take the attitude of “beating their vendors up” for another 2 percent discount or another free service in the coming year. Vendor interactions are dominated by discussions around “cost reduction” rather than “value enhancement.”

Understandably, I find in those companies vendor relationships are strained. Honest, straightforward communication between the vendor and the cataloger is limited. Not surprisingly in that environment, vendors are less than cooperative when the inevitable supply chain problems arise. Overall, an adversarial relationship exists, rather than a

In sitting down to write this month’s Editor’s Take, I first took a good look at all I’d just edited for the issue and man, not to take anything away from our other issues, but this one’s packed. Great tips to be had here throughout, great writers, veteran industry experts; it’s all here for you. Read this issue cover-to-cover, implement the million-dollar ideas that apply to you, and bingo, you’ll be ready to retire before you know it (kidding... well, sort of). What I’m most pumped about, however, is the groundbreaking survey we conducted in late August in partnership with the La Crosse, Wis.-based multichannel

Catalog Success: How was the catalog established? Bill Boatman: Prior to printing my first catalog in 1955, I owned a small grocery store. While running the grocery store I was buying space ads in specialty hunting magazines advertising accessories for dog hunters. I decided to buy an inexpensive mail-order course to start learning the catalog business. I started by collecting and processing the names and addresses of the customers at the grocery store. When I’d collected about 3,000 names and addresses, I mailed my first catalog. I realized the need for a direct catalog for hunters. I felt that with direct response

Catalog Success: How was the catalog established? Bill Boatman: Prior to printing my first catalog in 1955, I owned a small grocery store. While running the grocery store I was buying space ads in specialty hunting magazines advertising accessories for dog hunters. I decided to buy an inexpensive mail-order course to start learning the catalog business. I started by collecting and processing the names and addresses of the customers at the grocery store. When I’d collected about 3,000 names and addresses, I mailed my first catalog. I realized the need for a direct catalog for hunters. I felt that with direct response

BACKGROUND: Bill Boatman’s rural upbringing lured him into hunting and an outdoor lifestyle. Prior to printing his first catalog in 1955, Boatman owned a small grocery store in the Ohio farming town of Highland. While running the store, Boatman bought space ads in hunting magazines plugging hunting dog accessories he also was peddling. That led him to start a catalog. Before putting the Bill Boatman & Co. catalog together, Boatman compiled his own informal mailing list, collecting and processing the names and addresses of his customers at the grocery store. When he’d collected 3,000 of them, which he deemed sufficient at the time, Boatman

Welcome to our groundbreaking benchmark survey on catalog/multichannel mailing and marketing practices! This is a joint venture with multichannel ad agency Ovation Marketing, and the first in what will be an ongoing, quarterly series of surveys covering different aspects of the catalog/multichannel business. The survey contains a statistical analysis of a questionnaire we sent to the entire Catalog Success e-mail list in late August. The first two questions screened out any noncatalog decision makers. That left us with completed surveys from 175 catalogers — 97 consumer, 78 B-to-B. Click on any or all of the sets of responses under “Related Content,” to the right.