From the East Bloc and Beyond

The first Treasures edition, with a drop of 300,000, mailed in the spring. Siegler wouldn’t reveal sales results, saying only “they look good so far.” In all, he plans seven mail drops for the new catalog this year. Its prospect list came from the housefile and lists of home decor and gift buyers.

When prospecting for the Sovietski catalog, Siegler says his marketing team uses cooperative databases, rents targeted lists and places space ads in publications such as Sailing and Retired Officers, magazines read by those in the catalog’s target demographic. “We tried targeting prospects by ethnicity, such as Russian or Eastern European,” says Siegler, “but we found the data quality for that was not as good as we’d hoped.”