E-commerce: Winning the War

Unfortunately, just as the dot-coms have found there is no New Economy or New Math for measuring profits and worth, catalogers have found there’s no “new profitability” in producing an Internet sale.

The chart accompanying this article shows how rapidly seven catalogers are bringing the Internet into their sales mix, and what the effect has been. The companies included in the chart meet four criteria:
1. They’re public.
2. They report catalog and Internet sales quarter by quarter.
3. They’re principally oriented to merchandise sales to consumers.
4. They derive a very significant portion of their sales from the direct channel.