Garden.com: Growing By Its Own Rules

The Christmas catalog offered 20 kids’ products, but sidebars promoted more than 100 gifts for kids online. Sharples says traditional catalogers aren’t sourcing 80 additional products that aren’t in their catalog and that required a new way of designing and copywriting for the catalog.

Garden.com has fairly sophisticated tracking methods to determine how catalog-driven shoppers place orders. Unlike traditional catalog shoppers who simply input an order code to specific products, Garden.com purchasers go to specific plant sections and shop around. They tend to place their original catalog orders but also pick up a couple other varieties that aren’t offered in the catalog. This is a good indication that the catalog is doing its job. Sales were up 236 percent for the first quarter of 2000.