A Chat With January's Profile, Brendan Edgerton, vice president of direct marketing, Crutchfield Co. (Text & Audio)

CS: How did you get started in the catalog/multichannel business?
BE: I had probably a nontraditional start, although the more folks I meet in direct it seems like we all share kind of that multifaceted way to get into the business. I started off in Evanston, Ill. with a company called Herbert Krug & Associates, which was a small consulting firm. We were doing everything from circulation planning to list management/list brokerage, helping to acquire companies, helping to sell companies, and I kind of got to learn the business from the inside-out there. I was in Chicago in graduate school heading towards a degree in American Lit., I was teaching at Loyola, had my master's, was all dissertation, and came over to the dark side of catalog marketing as a way to support myself.