Catalog Doctor: The Page-Smart Catalog
4. Testing a new line extension? Include elements from a “proven” line. When sales are down due to a poor economy, adding a new line extension can make up lost sales by giving customers more reasons to buy. But how do you minimize the risk of a bomb?
Prescription: Analyze the reasons your customers buy a proven line. Then give them as many of the same reasons to buy your new line as possible. Do you specialize in hand-decorated, all-natural candies and are thinking of adding a cookie line? That means your cookies also should be all-natural and hand-decorated. Moreover, for your cookie launch, apply the same decorations you use on your best-selling candies where possible. If your cookies take off, then you can test ones with new decorations.
- 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.
