Harley-Davidson, Inc.

In a session during last week’s NEMOA conference in Portland, Maine, Lois Boyle, president/chief creative officer at catalog consulting firm J. Schmid & Assocs., said that the customer experience is the key factor in developing a successful catalog company. Stressing that in today’s world you’re more in competition with consumers’ time than with their pocketbooks, Boyle provided a few ways to help your catalog break through the clutter of everyday life. Included below are four of those tips: 1. Develop a schemata (customer’s frame of reference). Calling it the “curse of knowledge,” Boyle said that many catalogers know too much. “We get so close

Recent corporate financial scandals have called into question the quality of corporate earnings. Just because we don’t often hear about companies that thrive via positive, healthy, organic growth — by growing their customer base, creating new products and mastering operational efficiency — doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They do. What’s more, these companies convincingly demonstrate that you can be a high-performance organic growth company without resorting to accounting and earnings manipulations and without commoditizing and devaluing your employees. So what’s necessary if you want to grow a successful big business organically? Below are the three keys to successful growth and a few examples of

Harley-Davidson dealers customize retail traffic-builders It's summer, and while most people troop around in shorts and tees, motorcyclists take to the roads in perforated leather and nylon mesh. In the motorcycling market, Harley-Davidson stands out with its Motorclothes line. Customer brand loyalty is strong, as the Web site (www.harley-davidson.com) reminds us: "It's one thing to have people buy your products. It's another for them to tattoo your name on their body." Harley-Davidson, headquartered in Milwaukee, WI, was incorporated in 1903 but started mailing catalogs only 10 years ago. This year Harley will mail an annual core book of over 100