Quad/Graphics

It’s official: Millennials have surpassed baby boomers as the largest generation in the United States. With spending power of over $600 billion annually, retail marketers must figure out now more than ever how to capture attention, garner brand loyalty and, ultimately, drive purchases. However, with customers bombarded with more marketing messages in more channels than ever,…

Quad/Graphics has signed a multiyear agreement with Bluestem Brands, best known for its growing Fingerhut and Gettington.com brands. The agreement, which will exceed $135 million over its contract term, covers all printing, paper procurement, premedia, and page layout and production services as well as all product photography and video content creation services.

Quad/Graphics, a printer of retail advertising inserts in North America, announced today it's investing $20 million to expand its insert printing capabilities in the upper Midwest. The investment, which includes adding four retail offset presses to its Lomira, Wis., facility, will give clients additional quick-turn production and rapid delivery of versioned, smaller page count advertising formats inserted into newspapers.

Economic crisis accelerates changes in the basic underlying business models of multichannel marketers, who have had to adapt in order to survive as consumers shut their wallets. Here are some of the ways business models have been radically and permanently altered.

The Postal Service released final "droop" regulations this week that give small newspapers a break but are otherwise full of problems for mailers of catalogs, magazines and other flat mail.

Digital catalogs have been around for a long time, but they've suddenly become a valuable tool for marketers. The technology has dropped in cost to the point where marketers are almost forced to learn how to use digital editions — not to mention the fact that they've become very user-friendly, too.

This week in the final part of our two-part series on co-mailing economics, I’ll inform you of the various price estimates you need to research from printers to accurately compare savings between co-mail pools. I also pose a list of questions that catalogers need to ask printers when negotiating co-mail contracts. (For part 1, click here.) Cost Estimates It can be difficult to compare savings between different printer’s co-mail pools. To do this effectively, you need to get the following estimates from printers: * estimated gross postage without any savings; * estimated net postage after the printer’s mail pool and co-mail savings; and *

Headquarters: North Branford, Conn. Year founded/first catalog mailed: 1993-94 Merchandise: Uno Alla Volta — handcrafted collectibles, jewelry and pottery; Cooking Enthusiast — cookware and kitchen goods Mailings per year: 16 per title 12-month housefile: 65,000 for each title # of SKUs: 4,000 (combined) # of employees: 60 full-time Annual sales: $20.5 million (combined) Channel breakdown: 69 percent catalog/phone/fax/mail; 30 percent online; less than 1 percent outlet store Average order size: Cooking Enthusiast — $95;Uno Alla Volta — $175 (includes shipping charges) Printer: Quad/Graphics List manager: Belardi Ostroy

If you’ve yet to confront the challenge of measuring, reporting and improving the environmental sustainability of your printed catalog, here are six things you can do on your own to minimize the negative impact of your business. 1. Design efficiently. Combine bind-ins and ride-alongs with your catalog in a polywrap to reduce the number of separate mailings and the paper needed for those mailings. 2. Move with customers who move. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 14 percent of the population changed addresses last year. Nearly 33 percent of these people didn’t report their new addresses to the U.S. Postal Service, which

Editor’s Note: Jim Coogan, a catalog consultant since 1993 and former VP of marketing at Woodworker’s Supply, among other catalog and retail positions, has been a regular contributor for Catalog Success and the Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips e-newsletter for the past year. He attended the May 19-22 ACCM conference in Kissimmee, Fla., and filed the following recap on the event. I’ll file my own personal reflections on the conference in the July print edition. — Paul Miller, editor-in-chief There’s nothing like an economic downturn to get people’s attention. And the state of the economy and how it would affect catalogers was topic A