The Editor's Take: Let’s All Survive, Then Thrive

Like most, I’ve seen my family wealth shrink. I’ve seen friends and colleagues get laid off. I’ve seen the stock market continue to be eaten up by the bears. I’m seeing the catalog/multichannel business, as we know it, dwindle, while the overall retail business is in tatters. I’ve seen the size of our magazine diminish as the vendor community is hurting big-time. And I’ve seen some of our competitors all but disappear.

Virtually all the articles I read in BusinessWeek, Fortune, The New York Times business section and other business media are genuinely depressing. And when it comes to the retail community, if you’re not on the Wal-Mart Express, your numbers are heading downward.

What do we do about all this, kids? Fold up our tents and go home? Of course not. There’s business out there to be had, at least somewhere. We all need to change our thinking and concern ourselves with surviving this year.

4 Survival Strategies
For the non-Wal-Mart set, I offer these four survival strategies. See if any of them might work for you.

1. Try three parts value, one part price. We all know nobody beats Wal-Mart on price. Heck, some upscale shoppers who’d ordinarily buy jewelry at Tiffany might be migrating to Wal-Mart for some cubic zirconia pretty soon. So communicate through your Web site, print catalogs, e-mails and stores — if you operate any — that your products offer great value.

Bundle items together, and let customers know they’re less expensive as a package than they ordinarily would be when sold separately. But don’t try to make it look as if you’re a low-cost leader, because you can’t be. Still, loyal customers or consumers who find you via search want value — real or perceived — and bundled items appeal to them. Be sure what you bundle is your good stuff, not the cheapest junk you’re trying to unload. And to reprise a past suggestion I made in this space: Sell needs, not wants, this year.

2. Update your homepage daily. Those consumers willing to pull out their credit cards are looking everywhere before making any purchases. Don’t let them go to your site and see some static storefront with a big, generic “Welcome To …” sign. Show them the great value offer you have in store today.

3. Eat your shipping and handling fees. More catalog/Web marketers than ever before are offering free shipping with no strings or minimums. And that didn’t stop on Dec. 25, 2008; many continue to offer this because parcel shipping costs aren’t that steep these days.

What’s more, you need more orders. I know the temptation of this industry’s worst-kept secret (making a profit off shipping and handling fees — shhhh), but do what it takes to get those orders. Consumers think S&H charges are bogus and many know this secret by now anyway. So do something about your fees or they’ll look for another merchant offering free shipping.

4. Scale back print catalog prospecting to focus on search and e-mail. You may be able to get back to print prospecting later this year or next, but for now, focus on these cheaper alternatives that continue to be used by more and more consumers.

Save most of your catalog mailings for your proven customers. And for goodness sake, stop batch-mailing catalog requests — get them right out via First Class mail, especially those that come in online.

About the Catalog Success 200
During a year in which many merchants and economists are considering “flat” the new word for “sales gain,” our annual Catalog Success 200 ranking of the catalogs with the most housefile growth over the past year (see pg. 12) may seem a bit untimely.

But we did find 200 of them, even though No. 200 (Mid America Motorworks Corvette Catalog) had just 1.6 percent growth. Naturally, over the course of 200 catalog titles, the types of merchants run the gamut from apparel to gifts to office supplies to toys to food to horticulture to assorted B-to-B categories. A number of home furnishings marketers even appear on the list despite the slumping housing market.

Now that each of these 200 catalogs gained more new customers over the past year, the trick will be finding ways to keep them active this year. For each company listed, their files grew through a combination of adding names via the print catalog and online.

A final word to the 200 from the chart, as well as all readers: Consider how valuable any and every new customer is this year, and nurture each one appropriately. Distinguish the differences between Web shoppers, catalog shoppers and retail shoppers. Over time, those differences will diminish. But for now, they’re quite diverse. That’s at least a good starting point.