Title Nine Sports Shares Their Strategies

At a Glance
Catalog: Title Nine Sports
Headquarters: Emeryville, CA
Merchandise: Women’s fitness wear
Company founded: 1989
Best-selling items: sports bras account for 30 percent of sales
Target demographic: 30- to 50-year-old women who work outside of the home and participate in sports or fitness.
Title Nine Sports uses sports photographers to capture real-life models—career women who happen to love sports and fitness—showcasing merchandise.

Named after the landmark federal legislation that prohibits gender discrimination in schools and their sports programs, the Title Nine Sports catalog markets high-quality women’s fitness wear in a refreshingly casual and authentic manner.

From the use of real-life models to the founder’s own down-home voice in the call center’s on-hold messages, this Emeryville, CA-based catalog takes a respectful but no-nonsense approach to marketing its high-quality apparel to women.

Founded 13 years ago by Missy Park, a former Yale athlete, the catalog sells products ranging from sports bras to hiking boots. Park married her twin passions for sports and merchandising to create a company whose business serves the needs of woman athletes of all levels. Her unwavering focus on product fit and quality has earned her legions of faithful customers. Park, who not only runs her 100-employee company but also is raising two small children, was hard to catch up with; but once we did, she offered some valuable tips on finding high-quality products, maintaining authenticity in her corporate culture and much more.

Catalog Success: Title Nine is known for offering a consistently high level of product quality and for the authenticity of its corporate culture. Let’s start with the product. What criteria do you use in selecting new merchandise for your catalog?
Missy Park: We rate a piece of women’s fitness wear on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being a very well-made, functional, easy to wear and wash item. And I don’t mean the item can be handwashed; the customer should be able to throw the item in a regular washer and dryer just like any other piece of her wardrobe. The product has to be able to hold up well under tough workouts and a lot of washing.

CS: How do you get and maintain product quality?
Park: This is a big deal for us. In the beginning when I was wearing many hats, I conceptualized product and worked with manufacturers to get it. I’d try on an item and even work out in it. So the internal quality control then was me.

Today, we still wear the items before we decide to put them in the catalog. We want to be sure the item “breathes,” wears well, has enough of a seam allowance, zippers that are comfortable and other criteria.

Also, each of us works in returns processing for a set time period during crunch times—even me. I think other catalogers would be shocked at how much they can learn from this exercise. Like all catalogers, we get some things returned for individual reasons, but sometimes we get a high percentage of one item returned. It’s very revealing what you can learn from this. It may be a problem in the product, the creative, operations or something else. I think all catalogers should work in their returns for a while each week.

CS: How are you expanding your product line?
Park: We recently started carrying items that our customers can wear to work. For example, our new Tomboy Dress is a Tencel and Lycra dress that has just a credit card pocket in the hem. We’re positioning this as something comfortable that our customers can wear to work on casual Fridays. We also started carrying more expensive coats, such as $250 parkas for cross-country skiing or backpacking. Our customers told us they didn’t want to go to other retailers to get these items. But before we take on any new product, we ask: “How Title Nine is this?”

CS: Your catalog uses real-life models; the copy is written in a respectful but casual manner; and your on-hold message for your call center features your own voice in a friendly tone. How do you maintain that sense of authenticity throughout your corporate culture?
Park: We have on staff eight national champions of various sports. We all value the same things: hard work, accomplishment and the value of teamwork. We look for people who’ve played team sports, although it’s certainly not a prerequisite to work here. But all of our top managers played team sports, which teach you how to work for the good of the team.

Also, we tell new employees to bring their personalities to work with them—don’t check them at the door. I’m not a different person at home than I am at work. If you treat employees as individuals, they understand that they must treat customers as individuals, too. We empower call center staffers, for example, to make a situation right however they see fit.

We try to have fun, too. We play basketball with one another at lunch, for example. These things foster that sense of authenticity, which is genuine.

CS: When and why did you start using real-life models?
Park: We’ve always used real-life models. I had no money when I started, but I knew a lot of women who were fit athletes and who looked as good as anyone else. These women make it fun to go to photo shoots. They have real-life stories. They’re athletes with jobs—for example, a California doctor who runs three times a week, or a Hawaiian wedding planner who mountain bikes.

If we used professional models, sure they’d show up on time and with perfectly cut hair. But you’d get a consistent look to your book, which is not what we want. Our models move really well.

CS: What problems do you encounter by not using professional models?
Park: It’s difficult to find photographers. Fashion, or studio, photographers like to plan their shoots, which is just not possible in this case. So we end up usually hiring sports photographers. They’re patient and know to wait for the right moment—and to just keep shooting. We also send to the shoots “authenticity monitors.” For example, while the model may be a golfer, we’ll also send a staffer who golfs and who works with the photographer and the model to get the right level of authenticity for the shot.

CS: How do customers like this?
Park: We get many letters of praise on this. They see that our models are not perfectly buff personal trainers with 4 percent body fat. Rather, they are real women, with jobs and kids, and they love fitness and sports.

CS: Switching gears, what has been your company’s revenue growth in the last few years?
Park: In 2000 our sales grew 30 percent over 1999. Frankly, that was too much and too fast. In 2001 we projected to remain flat, and we were. This year, we’re projecting 15- to 20-percent growth, which is more reasonable for us.

CS: As a multichannel retailer, what percentage of sales do each of your channels represent?
Park: We don’t separate Web sales from catalog sales. Our site is like a fax machine to us; it’s just another way for customers to order. We have a nice Web site, but we didn’t spend a ton of money on it. During the holidays, about 50 percent of our business came through the Web, mostly from husbands buying for their wives. But after the holidays, when women buy for themselves, that number drops sharply. The site is not a separate business unit for us. The catalog drives the Web site. And our two retail stores account for less than 5 percent of company revenues.

CS: How did you get started in cataloging?
Park: In college I majored in history and played sports. I had one year of work experience and thought that somehow these things qualified me to run a business. I worked for North Face, the apparel manufacturer. All of my siblings and my father own their own businesses, and that was something I wanted to do, too.

So I quit North Face and started a catalog business. I had no grand plans; I did no market research. I only wanted to run a business and do something I love. I started the business by myself, and I quickly blasted through my first $13,000. My first catalog went to about 13,000 people. I asked my father for some insights, and he was for

a while my financial partner, but not anymore. It’s just me again.

CS: What were your original goals and mission?
Park: I wish I could say I’m good at planning, but I’m not. I simply wanted to be my own boss and do something I love. Being an athlete, I realized in the 1980s there were not many athletic products made just for women, not even for fitness buffs. But to be honest, I had no grand goal of growing to a $2 billion business or anything like that. I still simply like to work here.

CS: What have been some of your challenges in recent years?
Park: In 2000, we had a terrible time finding and retaining call center staffers. It was the height of the dot-com era, and here in Emeryville, you couldn’t get staff. The dot-coms were hiring many local people then. So we had to outsource a lot of our call center operations, which we don’t like to do. Frankly, those were the dark days. Luckily, we don’t have those problems anymore.

CS: After 13 years in cataloging, what tips would you offer a new cataloger today?
Park: Beware of numbers that you have to multiply. Adding and subtracting are OK, but be cautious when you have to start multiplying anything. Also, start small, learn everything you can, and build from there. And then just do it. You have to start with something that is doable and that you’ll enjoy. If you don’t love it, you won’t make it through the dark days.

CS: What’s the best business advice you ever got?
Park: Frank Farwell, the founder of Winter Silks catalog, once told me: “Never take advice from someone who doesn’t make money—and that means you’ll be taking advice from very few people.”

CS: How do you stay excited about the work? Where do you get your inspiration?
Park: I go for a run or a skate, I play a game, anything where there are no phones.

CS: You also contribute to athletic programs for girls. Why?
Park: We’re evangelical about sports participation for women and girls. We sponsor a basketball league for fourth- and fifth-grade girls in Berkeley. The league now has nine teams; Title Nine staffers coach all of the teams, and they can do it on company time.

We sponsor this not for the publicity, but because it’s cool and fun for everyone. I love business, and profit is important. The profits enable us to sponsor this league. We do it because, yes, it’s good for business, these are future customers, but because this is what we do. We don’t just write checks. We have no line item in our budget for these community activities. I don’t even know how much we spend on these initiatives. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, and because we truly love it.

CS: What has been your most satisfying experience in cataloging?
Park: Developing staffers. Golly, you hire them, they grow into their jobs, get married, buy houses, have kids, and you know that you’ve played a part in helping them do these things.

Title Nine
Sports’ Buyers
7- to 12-month buyers: 110,269
Percentage of women: 95
Average income of buyer: $40,000
List manager: Catalyst Direct Marketing, (201) 405-1414