Profile of Success: Mission Accomplished

WHAT ABOUT THE CATALOG INDUSTRY APPEALS MOST TO HER: Tackling challenges and using technology. “I try to do things a little better than the year before,” Killeen says. “I try to work a little smarter and a little more efficiently. A lot of times that involves technology.”

WHAT WAS HER BIGGEST MISTAKE AND HOW SHE SOLVED THE PROBLEM: Undervalu-ing the importance of multibuyers. “At Storybook Heirlooms, we started out selling high-end bedroom furniture and we had a gorgeous catalog,” she says. “We learned pretty quickly, fortunately, that furniture is complicated to deliver and that a significant part of mail order is having people rebuy from you. We were selling complete furniture sets, so they’d buy once, but not again. In either our first or second catalog, we put in a small insert of apparel and, within a year, we were an apparel catalog. We learned really fast that apparel was a much better niche for us.”