How to Maintain Your Housefile

A catalog company’s most valuable asset (other than people, of course) is its housefile. Obviously, a start-up cataloger has difficulty generating a profit during the first few years of operation. It has to start building the business without the benefit of having a mature housefile.

It can take several years for a housefile to reach the critical mass required to help convert red ink to black on the income statement. And it generally requires very deep pockets to fund operations during the start-up phase. This makes it even more important to properly design and maintain a housefile. A housefile is an extremely valuable marketing tool that enables improved target marketing, facilitates various analyses, and generates incremental income from renting and/or exchanging names with other reputable mailers.