Bits And Pieces

Having recently signed licensing agreements with the catalog brands from nonprofit organizations, Winterthur Museum and the National Wildlife Federation, Allston, Mass.-based catalog holding firm BlueSky Brands now operates five titles, including Paragon Gifts, Bits & Pieces and Bits & Pieces UK. BlueSky Brands CEO Richard Hebert discussed with Catalog Success his company’s recent acquisitions, business strategies and plans for the future. Catalog Success: What are BlueSky Brands’ goals? Richard Hebert: We’re looking to grow organically, as well as through acquisition. We’ve been pretty acquisitive so far, having obtained five retail direct-to-consumer brands in addition to the AB&C Group, our fulfillment company. And you will certainly see

At the turn of the 17th century, Italian inventor Galileo Galilei discovered that a change in temperature affects the buoyancy of liquid, giving rise to the invention of a crude thermometer. Fast forward about 400 years, and Galileo's "thermoscope" is now available to the masses, sold as a work of art and science to grace our homes and offices. Today's version consists of a clear glass cylinder, filled with a clear, temperature-sensitive liquid and glass globes filled with colored liquids, each with a numbered tag to display the temperature. Galileo's thermometer is difficult to describe, let alone image, in a catalog. Following,