A Day with a Pro: List Broker

The established cataloger refuses to continue exchanging its list to the start-up, claiming it is a direct competitor. The underlying factor is that the list broker of the established cataloger previously worked in its marketing department and felt threatened by the young catalog.

The solution: Bogner and his staff spent several days taking each catalog apart. A product-for-product comparison was made, revealing that just 16 percent of the products overlapped. Of the comparable products, one catalog was lower-priced than the other on 27 items and the other was lower on 28. They were priced the same on 10 of the overlaps.