Special Report: The Art and Science of Catalog Management

But numbers only go so far, given the future is never identical to the past. A two-way flow of hard data gleaned from statistics and historic performance, as well as intuition based on a thorough knowledge of your niche, is necessary for a winning strategy.

A Synergistic Relationship

Today’s catalog/multichannel business offers many opportunities for marketing and merchandising to work together to gain greater efficiencies. Multichannel marketing efforts may require marketers to identify opportunities for prospecting in media such as space ads or television. Capitalizing on these opportunities often requires a hero product of a certain price, which marketing and merchandising should work together to identify. They may need to acquire new items specifically for this purpose but that still support the overall brand and attract a prospect with strong lifetime value to that brand.