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

Other things that I think are interesting about our business is we tend to tolerate a certain level of mediocrity in our execution, and I mean this across the catalog industry. That often in times of economic downturns can come back and bite us, because that's when everybody runs out and starts focusing on optimizing their models or getting more efficient in the mail or conserving costs. And it's unfortunate that it takes those massive, winnowing out time frames to get people focused on doing this well. As an industry I think we have a lot to learn, there are some people who are doing a very good job with it, and the faster that we learn together the more viable our industry becomes and the more we can maintain consumer interest and a level of performance that we've come to enjoy over the years.