Lillian Vernon: Back to the Future

“People recognize 8-by-8 catalogs as Lillian Vernon books,” Muoio says. “So we decided that our legacy and brand are pre-eminent.”

2. Mail a thicker holiday catalog to your best customers. “We realized our core group of customers deserved our full holiday assortment, because their behavior across the categories and price points suggested that their capacity to purchase is very high,” Muoio says. Dollars per book on the larger holiday catalogs increased by 50 percent.