Catalog Doctor: The Page-Smart Catalog
3. Replacing a best-seller? Don’t stray too far.
Prescription: When a best-seller’s discontinued, search for a replacement that’s as close as possible to the product you’re replacing. For example, your supplier no longer stocks your best-selling Snowman Gift Tower boxes. But the supplier has a really cute Santa Tower box it suggests as a replacement. Should you say yes? Not before searching for another snowman. The snowman was a proven motif for you. Abandoning it altogether is risky — customers might abandon you for some catalog that still has their snowmen.
- Places:
- Portland, Ore.
Susan J. McIntyre is Founder and Chief Strategist of McIntyre Direct, a catalog agency and consultancy in Portland, Oregon offering complete creative, strategic, circulation and production services since 1991. Susan's broad experience with cataloging in multi-channel environments, plus her common-sense, bottom-line approach, have won clients from Vermont Country Store to Nautilus to C.C. Filson. A three-time ECHO award winner, McIntyre has addressed marketers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, has written and been quoted in publications worldwide, and is a regular columnist for Retail Online Integration magazine and ACMA. She can be reached at 503-286-1400 or susan@mcintyredirect.com.
