Developing a Turnaround Plan
Without a strong personal financial statement, financing a catalog company can be very difficult. An entrepreneur’s personal financial situation can be used to guarantee any and all loans to the company. Financing is especially difficult to obtain because catalog companies have few “hard” or tangible assets to use as collateral, such as machines or equipment of any value. Of course, your company’s inventory is its single largest asset. But your company can’t buy the merchandise without cash. And, unfortunately, most lending institutions do not consider your most valuable asset, the house file, when making loans. At best, banks might extend a token amount of credit toward the list, but it would not begin to approach the true value of your company’s customer file.
- Companies:
- Lett Direct Inc.
Steve Lett graduated from Indiana University in 1970 and immediately began his 50-year career in Direct Marketing; mainly catalogs.
Steve spent the first 25 years of his career in executive level positions at both consumer and business-to-business companies. The next 25 years have been with Lett Direct, Inc., the company Steve founded in early 1995. Lett Direct, Inc., is a catalog and internet consulting firm specializing in circulation planning, plan execution, analysis and digital marketing (Google Premier Partner).
Steve has served on the Ethics Committee of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and on a number of company boards, both public and private. He served on the Board of the ACMA.  He has been the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. He is the author of a book, Strategic Catalog Marketing. Steve is a past Chairman of both the Catalog Council and Business Mail Council of the DMA. He spent a few years teaching Direct Marketing at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
You can contact Steve at stevelett@lettdirect.com.
