Lillian Vernon’s mail order business has grown from a black-and-white space ad to nine catalogs

By Alicia Orr , Editor In Chief and Catalog Success

Based on information gleaned from studying its customer base over the past 10-plus years, Lillian Vernon has spun off five niche catalogs. Green explains how housefile analysis was used in its most recent spin-off of Lillian Vernon Gardening two years ago: “It was based on looking at product sales, surveying our customers and examining our database to see if we had any critical mass in certain areas. We saw an opportunity, tested it and found we had another catalog there.”