Tailoring Directly to Their Customers: A Chat With Sue & Robert Prenner

Catalog Success: What are your catalog’s customer demographics?

Sue Prenner: Professional men over the age of 45, but we’re trying to get younger.

Bob Prenner: We’re in sort of a niche market for people who like traditional clothing.

Sue: We like to say that it’s classic style and so for a long time the only people who recognized classic style were people who would be in that age demographic. But now it’s becoming fashionable, so they’re people who have never seen classic style before who are interested in it. But our price point is high so its going to appeal to the same fella who’s buying at Banana Republic or J. Crew. It may appeal to him, but he’s not going to be in a position to afford it as readily.

CS: Is it a goal of the company to drive down the demographic age?

BP: Well absolutely! You don’t change your clothes in the cemetery.

CS: What is your primary merchandise?

SP: We started with mens’ furnishings, particularly neckwear and shirts. Now we have a significant number of jackets and trousers.

BP: We’ve also introduced an eyeglass frame catalog. Ties are the largest segment followed by shirts, but believe it or not, shoes and eyeglasses come next.

SP: I would say eyeglasses are bigger than shirts. We’ve had spin-off catalogs on eyewear and shoes since 2003. Regimental neckwear, authentic British regimental neckties — stripes — have always been a strength for us. We can direct you from your shoes all the way up to your eyeglasses.

CS: What are the number of SKUs offered?

BP: Individual units? In the thousands. For example, these jewelry items that have a particular design for a school or just a generic design that could be available — it could be in brass, it could be in gold plate, in sterling silver, solid gold — are all a different SKU, and yet it’s the same design. It explodes out.

SP: In shoes alone we have 16 pages in the catalog, eight spreads. And we have an average of about eight shoes per spread. Eight different styles per spread, and each of those explodes into different colors and sizes. It’s an awful lot of product.

CS: What was your biggest initial challenge?

SP: It’s very challenging having a family business; splitting the responsibilities in a way that’s fair and offers the right level of responsibility, regard within the organization and allows you to manage the staff without conflict. An initial challenge was learning about the catalog industry, because in 1980 we didn’t know anything about that.

BP: We knew that we weren’t getting our product to the ultimate consumer in a way we wanted to. The business had been, prior to our getting involved, pretty much a wholesale business with a few products in the jewelry side of it. So we decided we were going to go catalog. And once we did that we were able to add product to the people and offer it to the same people who were buying the other product, with a little bit of advertising and rental of lists.

CS: What got you here?

SP: We were in the wholesale jewelry business and we found that the items we were selling were just not being promoted in a meaningful way. We tried our hand at marketing them directly, creating point-of-purchase displays that would help the retailers to market them more appropriately. They weren’t participating in that effort, so we decided that we would try to sell directly to the consumer. We really didn’t know anything about the catalog business per se, we did know a little bit how to market. We did a direct marketing campaign in which we rented lists of consumers and it became a mail-order business. At the beginning we sold only jewelry items, which was true for about four years, then we got into neckwear — authentic stripes, all-English silk, all-handmade neckwear. Our niche was really very much focused on people who had a pride and particular affiliation, and who tended to be Anglophiled as well. That’s really changed. It’s now a very sophisticated niche and it builds on that, but its not necessarily Anglophilic, and it’s not necessarily related to affiliations of any particular type. It’s a classic style.

CS: Biggest challenge this year?

BP: The last couple of years our biggest challenges have really been the suppliers we work with, and of course there’s the increasing pressure from the Asian market. Our suppliers are pretty much in Western Europe, Canada, very few left in America unfortunately. We get involved in issues of maintaining quality, because that’s really what we’re about. You can go a lot places and buy a shirt or a tie, it’s our opinion anyway that you can’t buy the quality or the care that goes in to what we sell in too many places. We have to make sure that we maintain absolute precision in what we’re getting — that the colors match the colors that we’ve photographed for the catalog, that the quality is as good, that the deliveries are timely (that’s a big problem too). We live in an instant gratification society, with UPS and FedEx, people want it right away. When we started out, if people got stuff in two or three weeks, big deal. But now they want it in two days, and we have to be ready for that. Also, a lot of our suppliers are getting tired of their struggle and they close down and we have to find new people who are at the same level.

SP: The people who are at our level of the industry, high-level men’s clothing and accessories, are able to produce at the level that we’re producing are big names that are able to sell at wholesale as well as at retail. So therefore they’ve positioned their retail pricing to be extremely high. The people that we’re talking about are the Polo’s, the Brioni’s or the very, very big names in Italy. We want to stay at a price point that is fair and yet consistent with the quality. It’s very hard to be in that position.

BP: Also we only have one men’s store in Charleston, South Carolina, and although it keeps us busy, we’re selling clothing to people all around the country and they’re just looking at a picture in a catalog. They don’t have the hands to touch it, they don’t have the chance to have it tailored from any sort of alterationist. And so that’s what we have to do in the catalog and not scare them away by too high a price.

CS: What would you say are the keys to your success?

SP: With us it has to do with the fact that we’re very engaged in every aspect of the business. Very hands-on. We’ve had very long-term employee relationships with staff that have been with us for 15 years. They have the same commitment, and our commitment to them has been very great. Over the years I think that’s made a big difference. I think that one of the big challenges in any business is holding on to the staff as a capital investment and treating them as a great value within the company that can’t really be depreciated and set aside. We’re very focused on quality. It’s not just being hands-on for detail, it’s being hands-on for quality. We really style everything ourselves, we’ve created all our own patterns and our own models. Everything is unique to us. If we won’t wear it, we don’t want to sell it.

BP: Certain circumstances have just occurred that have helped us. We’re sort of, not the last man standing, but one of the few in the mail-order side of finer clothing. A lot of people have come and gone over the years. I think a strong survival instinct is always helpful. We have to recognize, as we continually do, that nobody needs anything we sell. I’m always telling the staff that. So if somebody comes in the store and says, “I’m just looking, I don’t need anything,” I like to say that customer ‘Well you’re in the right place because we don’t sell anything anybody needs.’ These are things you want. You can buy a pair of shoes anywhere, but if you want one of the top shoes in the world, which probably in the long run will cost you less because it’ll last longer, then here we are. That’s what we’re doing for you.

CS: What they like most about the catalog/multichannel business?

SP: I think both of us enjoy the resourcing of fabric and color and new product, each year finding one thing that’s really special and different. We start the process out in terms of clothing approximately 18 months before we see a catalog. We’re spending time in mills and we’re looking at weaves and fabrics. That’s fun. For me, cause I’m much more involved in the design side as to the actual marketing of the catalog and Web, I really like working hands-on in all the design programs, and I do write the copy. I get a big kick out of all of that. Unfortunately it’s becoming to big of a job for me to be doing it all myself. It’s been fun over the years to work with very talented designers and to develop the catalog into a more refined instrument. We’re always striving to make it better. Both of us are by training lawyers, so we tend to be very careful about what we put on paper. It took me a long time to learn to be wordier so that I could sell better, and Bob is really good at cutting back the wordiness. Between the two of us I think we do a pretty good job.

BP: The creative side — whether it’s with the merchandise or with the catalog in print itself — that’s what we really sort of get turned on to. The challenge is to stay within this niche that we’re in but somehow seem fresh. As you can see, a lot of these old-time catalogs or advertising pieces can get pretty tired looking. If we don’t think that the catalog for the upcoming season isn’t the best one we’ve ever done, we have to change it. Constantly holding that as our challenge.

CS: What have you done to deal with the increased postal rates?

SP: I didn’t do anything about it this year at all, other than tighten my belt in other areas. I didn’t change my mailing plan dramatically. We did some really dramatic changes in the last five years. We really didn’t know what else to do beyond what we’d already done (adjusted our page count, changed the size of the catalog, changed the quality of the paper, changed the number of prospecting lists we use). We’ve done all that. So obviously we’re still critically looking at prospect lists and re-examining all the databases. All that aside, the only thing we think is really going to make a difference, and we also tried the spin-off catalogs as a way of having intensity of particular areas that are strengths for us rather than having it all in one catalog, but I think that the main focus this year has been to try to push a lot of material to the Web. Really try to improve our position on the Web. We’re finding a very substantial number of orders are coming from the Web site, and that is going to be the answer to some of the postage issues, but not all of them. It can’t be. Because everybody who orders on the Web in quantity is ordering with a catalog in front of them. It’s really painful and it just keeps getting more painful.

CS: Has the catalog served as a vehicle to help drive traffic to your Web site?

BP: Absolutely. The Web just becomes their order form. Currently 25 percent of our sales come from the Web, 10 percent from retail and 65 percent from the catalog.

CS: What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in the business and how did you recover?

BP: There’s been things we’ve tried that haven’t made money, but I wouldn’t necessarily call them mistakes. We’ve learned from them and turned them into positives. They tend to be more in the bricks and mortar side of things. Years ago opening up a store in D.C. that didn’t work out made us learn that we being control freaks and so hands-on that we couldn’t really manage from a distance, unless we had a whole network of people and we couldn’t afford to do that. Again, a couple of outlet stores in small towns in malls didn’t work out.

SP: Concepts were right but the execution was wrong and it was very costly mistakes. On a catalog basis, in 2003 and 2004 we did a women’s and children’s catalog which was a spin-off of the regular catalog. It was really beautiful and seemed a natural extension of where we were, because we were increasing the women’s product, but it really wasn’t the right way for us to go. We haven’t eliminated women’s, it just that we’ve kept in within the catalog. We also have a separate women’s store across the street from our men’s store rather than having them under the same roof. It wasn’t the right direction for us to go in at that time, maybe in the future it will be, but right now I still feel that we learned from that and we made our decision not to proceed in that direction.

BP: Obviously there have been a lot of mistakes, any business makes a lot mistakes I think. Lots of them turned out to be the typical mistakes — hiring the wrong person, not getting rid of someone when you should have, etc.

SP: Both of us can make mistakes in terms of management style, because we’re so hands-on in a way, makes us less able to deal with some of the management of people issues that arise. We could be very busy doing resourcing and so we don’t have time to really watch somebody develop or not develop until that person hasn’t developed fast enough and it’s time to let them go.

CS: What sets your company apart from the others?

SP: We make our products out of the best fabrics. If they have flaws we reject them, where many other companies would just let it go. We’re more into the details than most. Our quality and taste.

BP: I think we have a much better handle on knowing what our customer wants. An in-depth knowledge of the customer. I also like to think we provide value at a fair price.

CS: How do you keep things fun at the company?

BP: We have a small staff with many of the same people having been here for years. It’s an intimate environment, no rigidity, no formalities. We’re Bob and Sue to all our employees. But if you’re looking for pies in the face, that doesn’t go on here very often.

CS: Have you had any mentors?

SP: Not really from the catalog side. We’ve really gotten more advice from the vendors, the list side of the business. Our son has worked has worked with us for years and he’s served as a mentor to numerous employees.

CS: What he/she could have been?

SP: We’re both very creative, so it would have to be something that allows us to express our creativity. I know this, it would be together. We work really well together as a team.

BP: We’ve recently gotten into fundraising. We have a grandchild who has diabetes, so we’ve gotten involved with Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. We’ve even had some preliminary conversations of using a catalog to generate funds for a non-profit foundation.

CS: What are your hobbies?

SP: We’ve had to stop all our hobbies with all of our work and family responsibilities. We like to travel, create ideas. We have four grandchildren so we enjoy spending time with the family. I’m also an avid reader.

BP: I’m a big sports fan.

CS: What’s your deepest, darkest secret?

SP: We don’t use any models in the catalog. Everyone in the catalog is either family, friends or employees. Bob and I even are included.

BP: A secret to many is that I’m not Ben Silver. We had someone call up here the other day and ask for Ben Silver. The receptionist told the caller that he had passed away and the caller felt terrible. I made sure that she knew to tell people in the future that Ben Silver was Sue’s father and unfortunately he passed away 30 years ago.