Catalog of the Year Awards

On the following pages you’ll meet the winners of the second-annual Catalog Success Catalogers of the Year awards. We’re honored to recognize the contributions these four professionals have made to the catalog industry.

This year’s winners range from an entrepreneur who sells confections made from pecans grown on her 200-acre South Carolina farm, to a retail industry dynamo who transferred her skills to the catalog arena. You’ll meet a cataloger who initially was reluctant to join the family business, but later turned it into a multi-title, national enterprise. And you’ll also read about a woman who engineered one of the greatest catalog success stories ever told. We congratulate them on their success and wish them continued prosperity.

How the Winners Were Chosen

From this past December through February, nominations from the industry were accepted from readers, catalogers, editorial advisors and industry consultants. Catalog Success editors reviewed each nomination packet and narrowed the award categories to two to five nominees each. Then a panel of three judges selected the final winners. We thank the following industry professionals for their work on this year’s judging panel:

Lois Boyle, president, J. Schmid & Associates, a catalog consulting firm;

Liz Kislik, president, Liz Kislik Associates, a catalog consulting company and a member of Catalog Success Editorial Advisory Board; and

Shep Moyle, co-owner, Stumps catalogs, and the 2002 Catalog Success Business-to-Business Cataloger of the Year.

If you’d like to nominate yourself or a colleague for next year’s Catalogers of the Year awards, please see page 58 for more information, or log onto www.catalogsuccess.com/nominate.

CONSUMER Cataloger of the Year: Ashton Harrison, president, Shades of Light

by Alicia Orr Suman

With a background in retail home furnishings, Ashton Harrison was aware of the multitude of fabulous lighting products that were available only through wholesale merchandisers. No consumer catalog existed in this market.

So in 1995, she started the Shades of Light catalog, and in just eight years has built it from an idea to a $12 million company with two catalogs.

Shades of Light originated four years earlier as a retail store in Richmond, VA. A former vice president of the This End Up retail chain, Harrison had learned the value of a tight product focus; trying to be too many things to too many people was one reason This End Up went belly up three years ago, she says.

With Shades of Light, says company COO John Teyssier, Harrison’s goal is “to offer the best product at the best price with the best customer service, and to always strive to be better today than yesterday.”

Focused Merchandising

Like Hello Direct and headsets, or Victoria’s Secret and bras, Harrison’s mandate with Shades of Light is to concentrate on one area of merchandise, lighting products, and to be the best at it. “By focusing on one thing and trying to be the best you can, you’re presenting yourself as the top in your industry,” she says.

To keep that focus, Harrison uses several key strategies — foremost of which is focused merchandising. At Shades of Light, all products are grouped by category: table lamps, chandeliers, sconces, etc. Harrison has buyers and product development teams dedicated to each of those individual product categories. This, says Harrison, enables the catalog to maintain excellence and quality in every lighting merchandise category.

Next, Harrison took her catalog’s merchandising a step further into the lighting world — to sell the whole and all of its parts, such as shades, finials and bulbs. The product-line extension also has a financial benefit, she says: It maximizes sales per square inch in the catalog. “This is all part of our strategy to focus on one thing and be the best at it,” she notes.

Another example of Harrison’s devotion to her merchandise niche is Shades of Light’s establishment of its own product-testing lab and a full UL-certified assembly plant. This, she says, is to ensure that all product that leaves its distribution center is properly wired and safe.

The company also will alter products to allow customers to safely increase wattage when the original product design doesn’t allow for enough light; 30 to 50 percent of the products are customized — not an easy task, she says. “The UL book is a bear of a document, some 800 pages long, and in it are the measurements for how to calculate maximum wattages,” Harrison says. She sat down and figured out how to narrow the information to an easy-to-use chart, which is now posted on the company’s Web site (www.shadesoflight.com).

“Again, we focus on one area and do it all,” she points out. “We go to any lengths to satisfy a customer, including repairing any lamp we have ever sold at no charge.”

Marketing and Creative

Harrison’s “focus, focus, focus” philosophy extends beyond merchandising and into marketing and creative. The catalog is sectioned by product group, with some pages devoted to table lamps, others to floor lamps, etc. This is designed to make catalog shopping easier for the consumer, Harrison notes.

In the catalog, a section may be given more pages if those products are selling well. “We’ll expand the space we give to a category until the sales per page drops, and then we scale it back,” Harrison reveals.

The “look” is something else Harrison and the creative teamwork on coordinating for each catalog. Harrison sets the design style for each catalog a year in advance, requiring an ability to predict home-décor trends. “We try to create a look to each catalog. We might do a ‘Tommy Bahama’ look or a Zen focus, for instance.”

After every mailing, Harrison meets with her staff to assess how the marketing plan worked. “We make a huge list of what we need to do differently the next time.”

After getting input from everyone from marketing to the call center staffers, Harrison says she usually has 12 to 14 things to be changed. In addition to what Harrison called the “big list,” Shades of Light also uses customer surveys and weekly comparisons to keep the company on top of its game. “We always try to improve,” she says.

“We Are Family”

On-the-job training is one more important part of her business approach. “We train all staff in the particulars of lighting — for example, how to calculate wattage,” she notes.

Monthly management-training meetings, administered by Harrison, have been very successful. Teyssier explains, “The staff says they like hers better and learn more than from the professional ones we had a few years ago.” Training from manager to manager also is used to keep each department on target.

Harrison makes a point of knowing each of the company’s employees, and she spends time in activities such as having lunch periodically with the distribution center group to listen to their ideas on company improvement. The point of all this, she says, is to please the customer and fulfill his or her needs and desires for products.

Shades of Light has 10 mandatory rules for all employees to follow (see abbreviated list below), which are the basic requirements for their jobs. In addition, each department head has developed his or her own list. “This leaves no questions as to where company priorities lie,” Harrison says.

Harrison’s 10 Rules for Employees:
1. Set your goals high and then analyze (post-mortem) to create new strategies to try.
2. Go to any lengths to satisfy a customer.
3. All in-stock products must be shipped within 24 hours. No exceptions.
4. Focus on one area of business and be the best at it.
5. Managers: Require your team’s 10 bests at all times (train, measure, re-train).
6. Break industry rules. Try something new and different every day.
7. Think of Shades of Light as the lighting/flooring experts and innovators. Create a lighting or flooring “experience” for customers. What new product can you think of (i.e., exclusive faux skylight to add happy mood lighting to the home)?
8. In marketing, always show the benefit of the product.
9. We are family. We’re all one team (e.g., retail, distribution, call center).
10. Never lose a sale or a customer. If you run out of ideas, see customer service, John or Ashton.

The Future

Harrison has built a catalog business that brought in 40,000 12-month customers last year. But she’s not ready to sit still. In fact, she’s taking her focused merchandising strategy to another market: rugs.

Started in 2002, Rugs Under Foot seeks to replicate the success of Shades of Light, and everything for the second catalog is handled separately, with the exception of customer service/call center employees (but even they get specialized product training).

Continuing Harrison’s “one product, one focus” philosophy: “Separate buyers, marketing people and creative teams work on the new catalog.” As she explains, “We want everyone to be able to stay focused on their products so that we can maintain the company’s high standards.”

B-to-B Cataloger of the Year: Paul DiGiovanni, president, Autom

By Gabrielle Mosquera

At a time when his 20-year-old college peers were worrying only about exams, Paul DiGiovanni was taking over his late father’s business, a small retail store selling religious books and gifts to Phoenix-area churches.

Thirty years later, that store has grown into Autom, a multi-title mailer offering churches, resellers and consumers religious products exclusively sourced from around the world. And it’s largely credited to the leadership and dedication of Paul DiGiovanni.

Today, Autom employs 100 people, has five titles and mails a total of 4.5 million catalogs a year.

The Family Business

DiGiovanni’s father, Ignatius, a first-generation Italian-American who embraced Catholicism later in life, opened Phoenix’s first Catholic bookstore with his wife in 1948. Autom (whose name combines those of Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas) soon flourished as Ignatius forged relationships with local clergymen.

Paul, the eldest of three siblings now involved in Autom’s operations, began delivering orders to churches at age 10. Though he certainly was familiar with the family business, DiGiovanni admits that while growing up he’d had enough run-ins with his father’s strong personality to prevent wanting to work there some day.

DiGiovanni entered Arizona State University in 1970 to study accounting and intended to graduate and move as far away as possible from both his father and Autom. But when Ignatius died in 1973, Paul instead opted to stay so the family could keep its business.

“I guess it was the emotional tug or family pride,” he says of the decision. “I didn’t say, ‘I must do this.’ But I had a spiritual side, and I knew the business and the customers, so it was a natural thing.”

DiGiovanni continued his college studies at night while running the store and visiting local churches during the day. In 1975, a few years after graduation, he saw an ad from Solar Press for co-op card decks that mailed to churches across the country.

Sensing an opportunity to not only grow the business but personalize it using his interest in merchandising, DiGiovanni asked one of his vendors whether he’d get a good price if he bought bulk quantities of a particular alb (a garment worn by clergy in many Christian churches). The vendor agreed, and Autom began a venture into alternative-media prospecting and mail-order sales.

Response to the card deck was so positive DiGiovanni employed the same tactic for other products, and soon, Autom was mailing its own deck of 40 cards every month.

In 1977, DiGiovanni pushed business further ahead by sourcing 3,000 plain black clergy shirts from a factory in Hong Kong through a personal connection there. Though he had to borrow money at high interest rates to fund the order, the payoff was immense. “The shirts just flew out the door,” he says. “So we started asking [the factory] to do other things.”

By 1980, Autom had enough “other things” — apparel items such as choir gowns, stoles and chasubles, and novelties such as Christmas ornaments — to produce a black-and-white catalog. In the same year, DiGiovanni’s brother Tom entered the business and became heavily involved in Autom’s development. (Tom DiGiovanni now runs the company’s resale catalog, its fastest-growing title.) After business from that first catalog leveled off, the DiGiovannis hired an industry consultant for extra help, and in 1984 the company mailed its first full-color catalog.

As time and revenues progressed, The DiGiovannis diversified their titles. Autom Christian, a catalog geared toward Protestant churches, first mailed in 1986, and Autom Consumer debuted in 1995. The Autom Trade resale catalog launched in 1999, and the company’s newest title, Autom Church Supplies, joined the family in 2002.

As a result, Autom’s current customer profile includes churches, hospitals, youth groups, retail stores and individual consumers, all sharing the common need for, or interest in, religious and inspirational merchandise.

Product as Strategy and Strength

Paul DiGiovanni’s interest in and commitment to product sourcing fosters what he sees as Autom’s business differentiator: the ability to provide customers with merchandise that’s more varied, affordable and durable than the competition’s. Because he travels for months at a time touring manufacturers’ factories from top to bottom, DiGiovanni not only secures the best product prices, but also can evaluate other factory products for new category opportunities.

“It was easy to be in the cold-cast resin [product] business, but what about wood, and what about plush?” he points out, naming categories Autom now offers. “It pays huge dividends.”

As he sees it, “Your customer has hundreds of places to give business to, so you’d better scour the world for the best product. And if you can convey that in a catalog, frankly, you can get someone to look through it.”

In fact, DiGiovanni scours Hong Kong suppliers so extensively that about six years ago he added a company office there. He tries to visit a new country every six months, and recently added the Phillipines, India and Thailand to Autom’s roster of vendor countries.

While he excels at product sourcing and merchandising, DiGiovanni readily admits to lacking expertise on the back end. All of Autom’s operations are conducted in-house at the Phoenix headquarters, and DiGiovanni has hired experienced professionals in finance, circulation and order fulfillment. “I think our challenge is not to tinker too much with them,” he jokes.

Leaving the back end to catalog pros frees the DiGiovannis to concentrate on developing new titles, a strategy they see as key to Autom’s future.

“At some point, a company hits the wall with a title,” DiGiovanni says. “It’s rented all the good lists, gleaned its housefile from them, and there’s a point of diminishing return. Either you have to add pages or titles. We’ve felt that in the past 20 years the way to grow the business is to add titles.”

Perhaps a little ironic is DiGiovanni’s own hope of keeping Autom a family business, at least for the foreseeable future. Despite being less-than-eager when he entered the company, he now can’t imagine giving it up. “It’s a great job,” he says. “I wake up every day and want to go to work.”

ENTREPRENEUR of the Year: Charlotte Harrell, co-owner, Harrell Farms

By Gabrielle Mosquera

Those who work with her claim that Charlotte Harrell’s Southern hospitality flavors her daily catalog operations as much as it does her products: pecan candies and confections made from nuts harvested on-site at her 200-acre farm in Meggett, SC.

But it’s more than just hospitality that has boosted Harrell Farms’ overall sales volume 60 percent per year since its 1999 launch. Harrell’s ambition, eye for design and firm product-quality standards also have gone a long way toward pushing the company’s growth. Since 1999, Harrell Farms has:
- increased its average order value by 56 percent;
- increased its number of orders by 45 percent per year;
- increased its catalog circulation from 25,000 to 500,000; and
- moved operations from Harrell’s kitchen to a 16,000-square-foot physical plant.

A look at her underlying devotion illuminates both why and how the company has accomplished so much, so quickly. For example, when asked for her future business goals, Harrell says she aims to grow her housefile while providing the best product and value — not in the catalog industry or even the country, but, in her words, on the planet.

Lessons Learned in the Trenches of Retail ... and Farming

This South Carolina native has a long history of picking products with the customer in mind. She first entered the business world in 1970 as the owner and operator of four Charleston, SC-based retail stores called, charmingly enough, Charlotte Harrell’s Shops. For 12 years she selected and sold high-end decorative accessories, antiques, gifts, art, gourmet cookware, kitchen items and more. By 1982, the rigors of a small, family-owned business had taken their toll, and Harrell sold the stores.

But her enterprising spirit wouldn’t stay dormant for long. In 1983, Harrell and her husband, Bob, bought a pecan farm near Charleston, SC. During the next 15 years, they — along with the help of their three children and eight grandchildren — planted and cultivated hundreds of pecan trees. From these, Harrell gathered enough fresh nuts to sell in 3- and 5-pound bags from an office in town.

After some thought, Harrell decided to try roasting and salting some pecans to see if customers would like them. They went over so well she started experimenting with other concoctions — pralines, honey-roasted pecans and double-dipped chocolate-coated pecans.

Favorable response to all of these inspired Harrell to enter the world of mail order, and in 1999, she launched the first edition of the Harrell Farms catalog. The 16-page, four-color, digest-sized catalog featured several items that still appear in it today, including the Nibblers’ Delight Sampler, Pecan Lovers’ Sampler, and natural shelled pecan halves and pieces.

Though Harrell’s retail experience gave her a keen creative sense for layout and design, her lack of marketing know-how brought with it some challenges. For example, she says, her initial customer-targeting methodology was hardly scientific; she mailed the catalog to family members, business acquaintances and some lists of club members.

After working with several industry consultants, Harrell found a match in Jim Padgitt, president of catalog consultancy Direct Marketing Insights. Harrell credits Padgitt with helping significantly increase her orders and responses.

Their combined work reveals itself in several successful metrics. Harrell Farms now offers 90 percent more product than it did in 1999, and its staff has increased from one to seven, with 30 part-time employees hired during busy seasons. The company now takes orders around the clock, thanks to outsourced call center Midco. And in 2001, Harrell launched the catalog’s Web site, www.harrellfarms.com.

A Passion for Quality

The company’s success no doubt owes much to Harrell’s unwavering standards for product quality. Simply put, she won’t compromise them: “I strive to be sure that the appearance and quality of every item we send is such that I’d be pleased with what I saw and tasted if I were standing beside the recipient when the package was opened and the products consumed.”

Padgitt affirms this. “She literally makes no distinction between what she’d be proud to present a close family friend and what she sends to perfect strangers responding to her catalog,” he says.

To that end, Harrell Farms offers a 100-percent satisfaction guarantee on all products, personalized with the phrase “We’ll make it right with you.”

Harrell certainly has plenty of help available to maintain her standards. In addition to her staff, Harrell’s husband, children and their spouses, grandchildren, and sister all are involved with some aspect of the Harrell Farms operation, if only to help during the harvest and holiday seasons.

Although Harrell would like to keep the business a family one in the future, she acknowledges that all of her children have careers outside the catalog realm. Because of this, she’d prefer to transfer any future leadership to employees who have true personal stakes in the company. She hopes to nurture this leadership through an employee stock option plan that she’s currently drafting and that may be offered in 2005 to staffers with three full years of employment or more.

“It makes sense to reward the ones who built the business by making it possible for each of them to own part of it,” she reasons. “Our plan gives them the opportunity to buy the business, over time, without any out-of-

pocket cash. Their profit-sharing participation can be used to buy their share of the business.”

For now though, Harrell is happy to keep the reins in her own hands. She’s still learning the catalog business, she points out, and she still has plenty to look forward to. “I enjoy the interactions with people, the challenges, creativity and satisfaction of a job well done,” she says. “I also enjoy the independence and the ability to determine my own agenda.”

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWAR: Lillian Vernon, founder, Lillian Vernon Corp.

By Alicia Orr Suman

Almost everyone knows the story of how Lillian Vernon launched a catalog business on the kitchen table of her Mount Vernon, NY, apartment. It was 1951, and the young housewife, pregnant with her first child, used $2,000 of her wedding gift money as venture capital to start her own business selling personalized belts and handbags.

A $495 direct response ad in Seventeen magazine brought in $32,000 in orders. Such was the start of one of the most famous catalog success stories ever told.

Last year, the company that Vernon founded received more than 4 million orders. Lillian Vernon Corp., comprised of seven catalog titles, two Web sites and 14 retail outlet stores, brought in $238 million in sales in fiscal 2003. Recently, Vernon sold her company and will step away from its day-to-day operations, but she remains involved in merchandising and being the public face of the company, and is truly one of the catalog industry’s pioneers.

Risks Led to Success

Lillian Vernon’s company, Vernon Specialties as it was known back in the 1950s, mailed its first catalog in 1956. A 16-page black-and-white book, it was sent to 125,000 responders to her print ads. The catalog’s product line was built on the premise of personalized products at a fair price, and it included personalized cuff links, blazer buttons, combs and collar pins.

“I wanted to sell unique products that the average person could afford, and I have stayed true to that vision,” Vernon says. She had devised the idea for her business after browsing the pages of Seventeen, her favorite magazine at the time and one that she was sure appealed to other young women like herself.

Getting up the guts to start a business was the greatest challenge she has ever faced, Vernon told Catalog Success.

“Being a woman who wanted to start her own company in the 1950s, at a time when society dictated that women stay home, raise their children and take care of their husbands … I met resistance from my husband who felt I shouldn’t embark on a risky idea,” she recalls. “My friends couldn’t understand why I wasn’t content being a wife and soon-to-be mother. … My mother also challenged my decision.”

Though it wasn’t easy running a new business while being a wife and mother, Vernon says she never lost sight of the fact that her family was her first priority.

Merchandise With a Personal Touch

Vernon’s merchandise strategy began with personalized products — and that’s still a service that sets the catalogs apart from the competition. Personalization has been a company trademark, and the catalog continues to be one of the few to offer that service free of charge.

With one of the largest personalization departments in the country, Lillian Vernon is able to personalize its products without the customary four- to six-week delay by most retailers — a key selling point. “Personalized products allow our customers to make a personal statement at a reasonable cost,” Vernon says.

A Pioneering Spirit

Vernon also was one of the pioneers of the unconditional guarantee, free-gift-with-purchase and deferred billing — all catalog marketing strategies widely used today.

During the years, the company expanded its focus beyond personalized merchandise, and now, all totaled, the company’s catalogs carry more than 6,000 products. For many years, Vernon was the company’s chief merchant, traveling the world and attending trade shows with a team of buyers in search of new and unique merchandise. About 50 percent of the catalogs’ products are new each year and come from 34 countries and 40 states, and items that can be personalized comprise one of the many criteria still used to select merchandise.

Growing a Business

Business growth came naturally to the company as a result of Vernon’s analysis of what her customers were buying and what they said they wanted. She recalls, “My growing list of customers had written to ask me to expand my product line. I followed their suggestions and introduced a catalog with more personalized accessories, functional home products and décor. The response was very positive.” Sales grew, and so did the company’s customer mailing list.

The next logical step was the spin-off titles, taking popular categories and turning them into their own individual catalogs.

Today, the company publishes seven catalog titles — six under the Lillian Vernon name, including the flagship Lillian Vernon catalog, a sale catalog, Lilly’s Kids, Favorites, Christmas Memories, and Personalized Gifts. The company acquired Rue de France catalog in 2000.

Taking her business to the Internet was Vernon’s most recent growth strategy. The company began selling products online in 1995 on America Online. In 2000, it launched a new Web site at www.lillianvernon.com.

For all of her pioneering work in building her business and her contributions to the catalog industry, Vernon has received scores of honors and awards, among them: Direct Marketing Club of New York Silver Apple award, Catalog of the Year at the Annual Catalog Conference, National Foundation of Women Business Owners Leading Women Entrepreneurs, and membership in The Direct Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame.

Her Next Chapter

This year marks a new chapter for the company and for Vernon as she steps down from the helm. She sold the company to ZelnickMedia for $60 million. Strauss Zelnick is chairman of the company’s direct marketing group, which includes the catalog company. At press time the deal was expected to be completed by the end of this month (see “Lillian Vernon Catalog Company Sold,” Catalog Success, June 2003).

Vernon will continue to be involved in the business by exploring new ways to expand the brand. Licensing of the Lillian Vernon name, a strategy begun last year, will be a major thrust for Vernon.

What does Vernon see for the catalogs as they move to a new chapter? “We will continue to offer our customers catalogs with a wide variety of unique products they have come to expect at affordable prices and to remain a leader in personalization.”

In addition, she looks to the continued growth of the company’s Web site as a way to expand the customer base to include a younger, better-educated and more affluent demographic.

“Overall, we plan to capitalize on our strength as a multichannel retailer by marketing in different media other than direct mail,” Vernon concludes. For her part, Vernon says, “I’m planning more appearances on home shopping cable television, writing a syndicated weekly newspaper column and starting a consumer advertising campaign to promote our business.”

Vernon says the decision to sell her company after nurturing it for 52 years and seeing it grow was one of the most difficult moments in her career. “It took soul-searching, but I realized that the time had come for me to pass the torch to a visionary person who would keep the brand alive forever and assure its long-term future.”