Thomas Millner

Melissa Campanelli is Editor-in-Chief of Total Retail. She is an industry veteran, having covered all aspects of retail, tech, digital, e-commerce, and marketing over the past 20 years. Melissa is also the co-founder of the Women in Retail Leadership Circle.

The biggest retail news from last week in my opinion was Cabela's CEO Thomas Millner stating in a conference call that the company would begin to phase out its paper catalogs. So, what do you think about this move by Cabela's? And how do you feel about catalogs as a marketing tool in general? Have they outlived their usefulness or are they still an effective marketing vehicle? We're trying to get to the bottom of this issue via our new "Question of the Week" discussion on our Facebook page. We'd love to hear from you!

Cabela's is leaving something behind as it begins its journey to become a truly omnichannel retailer: its paper catalogs. The retailer's initial steps will focus on a print-to-digital transformation, tests of targeted shipping offers, and new mobile and digital efforts for the holiday season, according to CEO Thomas Millner. "Late last year, we began to develop a multiyear approach to reverse the four-year downtrend in our direct segment and transform our 51-year-old legacy catalog business into an omnichannel enterprise supporting transformation for digital, e-commerce and mobile while optimizing the customer experience with our growing retail footprint."

Executives at sporting goods and apparel retailer Cabela’s believe that when it comes to its most technically sophisticated high-performance products, the presence of a salesperson to interact with and guide customers is crucial to making the sale. But a belief isn’t enough to make a business case, so the retailer used sophisticated tools to analyze shopper behavior in its stores. The resulting data supported higher staff levels in Cabela’s performance footwear and gun departments, and when staff levels were raised in Q4 of 2010, sales in these categories increased. “We’ve used some rather advanced analytic tools to measure how

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