It’s Only Natural

An impromptu trip from Denmark to England started it all.

It was the summer of 1973, and while traveling in Denmark, Grant Dowse and Pegge Kirschner decided to take a road trip to England. To make the car comfortable enough to camp in, they bought, among other things, a cotton flannel sheet.

They eventually brought the sheet home with them, and later ordered a similar item from an American mail order company. But it wound up being a synthetic version of the English flannel sheet they’d purchased in Europe. That transaction inspired them to launch their own mail order business.

Married three years later, the Dowses transformed their cottage in New Hampshire’s White Mountains into an office. They placed a 1-inch ad in Yankee Magazine and a 2-inch ad in Country Journal in December 1976. Not long after, they mailed their first catalog: a die-cut brochure with flannel swatches.

Their timing couldn’t have been better. The United States was in the throes of an energy crisis and Garnet Hill’s cozy flannel bedding offered a simple means of reducing heating bills. Six months into their venture, the Dowses were forced to move the company to a new location in downtown Franconia, N.H.; the original structure still remains part of Garnet Hill’s headquarters today.

Celebrating its 30th year in business, Garnet Hill has expanded its product line from flannel sheets and bedding to women’s fashion, home furnishings, and children’s clothing, furniture, bedding and accessories.

Its physical and organizational structures may be more sophisticated than in its early days, but Garnet Hill’s leadership enforces the company’s original values: high quality, integrity, respect and solid customer service — the main reasons, company management believes, it continues to succeed.

Fair Treatment = Loyalty

“Loyalty is one of the things that you earn, and we’ve earned it over time by treating our customers fairly and with respect, and by bringing them a great product,” says Garnet Hill President/CEO Russ Gaitskill, who notes that the product line is proprietary. “We spend a lot of time and effort on the technical part of design and quality.”

In essence, Garnet Hill (named after a small mountain in the nearby town of Sugar Hill, N.H.) sticks to one of the key reasons consumers buy direct; it offers products they can’t get anywhere else.

Now, one of Garnet Hill’s biggest priorities is the interpretation of its brand on the Web. An early adopter of e-commerce, it gets the bulk of its sales via the Internet.

“We invested early on, making sure that what you see on the Web — from a service perspective, as well as creative imaging — is transparent” between the site and the print catalog, Gaitskill explains. “You don’t go on our Web site and wonder where you are. It’s clear from the use of our images and the quality we put into the photography there.”

Betty Moody, vice president of customer satisfaction, says that because customers easily can price shop online, customer service is all the more important.

Garnet Hill’s staff describes its average customer as discerning; an affluent woman in her mid-40s, who’s not label-sensitive but brand-loyal. “She understands quality, construction and good taste,” Gaitskill explains, “without having to have a label on it.”

Adorned in Merchandise

The company’s employees are like its customers. They and their children wear Garnet Hill products, and their homes are furnished with the company’s linens. “It’s really wonderful to be able to offer to our customers the experience with the product and the first-hand knowledge about its construction, manufacturing and care,” Moody says.

Garnet Hill management also is adamant about the company’s work culture, which emphasizes employee trust. The company’s call center, for instance, is based in its headquarters overlooking the White Mountains. But the reasoning isn’t so call center reps quickly can turn to supervisors when issues arise. “There is no, ‘Let me have you talk to my supervisor’ or, ‘You’ll have to call customer service for that,’” Gaitskill explains. “They can do anything for the customer that I can do.”

And call center reps like it that way. The average tenure in the customer service center is six years. Some staff members, such as Moody, have been with Garnet Hill for as many as 20 years.

Without relaying any specific numbers, Gaitskill says Garnet Hill’s sales growth is rapid. “One of our advantages is that we have very well-developed home and apparel businesses. This allows us to steer the business based on what’s going on in the economy, and we have permission from our customers to sell them both,” he says.

The introduction of a children’s book in fall 2004 has proven successful, and the cataloger is continuing to make prospecting headway via its catalog and paid search.

What’s more, it always considers spinning out new titles, as well as acquisitions that would further penetrate its existing markets. “We’re getting a lot of people to come to Garnet Hill based on paid search who perhaps wouldn’t have found us otherwise,” Gaitskill says.

Aggressive PR

Garnet Hill’s Public Relations Manager Wendy Thayer heads an aggressive PR campaign that results in regular coverage in national consumer publications. “It’s a great way to drive brand awareness and prospects to our company,” she says.

Four times a year, Thayer sends press kits to her media contacts, in addition to making visits to the press to promote newsworthy products. Members of the press also are treated to product previews each season via Garnet Hill’s media site, and Thayer stages an average of one to two press events in New York City on an annual basis.

Surviving Sudden Deaths

One PR-related challenge was an emotional, internal one. While returning from a photo shoot in 1985, the Dowses were killed in a plane crash. Moody remembers the staff focusing on daily routines to get through that trying period. “We banded together and did what we had to do,” she recalls. “We licked the stamps and tagged boxes, paid bills and prayed and prayed for whatever we needed.”

Tenacity paid off. Under the Hamblin family, Garnet Hill built a new warehouse and integrated computers into the company’s back-office systems. Then in 1997, the cataloger was acquired by Cornerstone Brands. Over its decade of ownership, Cornerstone has leveraged resources but stayed out of the way when it’s come to creative and merchandising.

When IAC acquired Cornerstone in 2005, again Garnet Hill benefited from additional resources without compromising its independence. “Every ownership change has created turmoil,” Gaitskill said, “but we’ve been able to manage that with very little [negative] impact on our business.”

“Regardless of who the owner is, you tend not to mess with something if it’s working,” says Ben Perez, president of Garnet Hill’s Peterborough, N.H.-based list management firm the Millard Group. “It’s a situation where management has made the decision to not mess with it, and that has served the cataloger well.”

Perez praises Garnet Hill’s current leadership, as well as “solid product, a commitment to doing it right, taking care of the customer and being innovative,” he says. “When you’re around [Garnet Hill managers], you find quality throughout the organization, and that’s reflected in the catalog and the company’s success.”

Technology for the People

Garnet Hill President/CEO Russ Gaitskill heralds the company’s early adoption and continued progress with the integration of technology. Technology, he says, shouldn’t intimidate would-be catalogers or those already in the business. Rather, it should be viewed as a vehicle through which to service clients as well as possible.

“One of the things that appears baffling to most people is the technology,” Gaitskill observes. “If you’re thinking of starting a catalog or getting into the business, that’s one of the things that’s out there. You have to have a belief in your product and have a product that has a competitive differentiator. Then, you have to set yourself up organizationally and in terms of technology in a way that the customer always comes first.”

About Garnet Hill
Headquarters: Franconia, N.H.
First catalog mailed: 1976
Merchandise: natural-fiber bedding, home furnishings and accessories, women’s and children’s apparel, and furniture and accessories for children’s rooms
Customer demographics: women in their 40s with an average income of $100,000
Price range: $8 for face cloths to $1,000-plus for a bed
Average unit of sale: $200
12-month housefile: 439,050
Number of employees: 200+
List manager: Millard Group
Printer: Quebecor Worldwide
Web site: www.garnethill.com

Carolyn Heinze is a freelance writer/editor based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. You can reach her via her Web site at carolynheinze.blogspot.com.