Print-Plus: Hello Mr. (Catalog) President …

4. We should be willing to rent and/or exchange with our competitors. Why not? If you rent to a competitor, it should be on a reciprocal basis so you too can benefit from using their list. Consider a mail date restriction or an older recency if you feel it's necessary. Be sure your catalog is in the mail first, and monitor and control the exchange balance. Once again, if you elect not to rent to competitors there's a high probability they're working with a co-op database where they'll prospect names anyway. Mr. Catalog President, you have just as much (or more) to gain from renting your housefile to a competitor since they can most likely obtain these same names through one of the co-op databases anyway.