Stupid Catalog Tricks

“I’m embarrassed to be seen with my products.”

The catalog was filled with attractive young models playing in the snow. It looked very nice, except ...

“You sell camping gear, right?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” said the catalog manager.

“Which none of these models is using?”

The manager smiled. “Our products are so ugly and boring, we realized the only way to sell them was to show something else.”

“So how are sales?”

“Not great.”

I’m amazed by how many catalogers are embarrassed by the products they sell, and I see it in all product categories. It doesn’t correlate with the products themselves, either. They’re usually well-designed, well-built, fairly priced good-sellers.

So, why do these catalogers find their quality products to be ugly, unstylish, chintzy and/or tacky? Is it simply a mismatch between the catalog’s niche and the personality of the cataloger’s staff?

Actually, it goes deeper. These catalogers are failing to perform the most basic step for effective catalog sales—seeing the world through their customers’ eyes.

In the example above, the products that this catalog manager felt were ugly and boring actually were top-quality camping items made of durable outdoor fabrics.

Had this cataloger been capable of seeing through her customers’ eyes, she would have seen products that were exciting, appealing and rewarding. That’s exactly how they should have been portrayed in her catalog—not hidden behind frolicking models.

“I’m embarrassed to be seen with my customers.”

“Here’s our new spring line. We expect great sales.”

The catalog mockup I was looking at showed line after line of trim, youthful, closely fitted women’s apparel.

“Um ... your audience is mostly old and overweight, right?” I asked.

The cataloger made a face. “Oh, we bury that stuff in back.”

For every cataloger who is embarrassed by his or her products, I can point to two who are embarrassed by their customers. Some comments I’ve heard:

• ”I don’t care to sell to such people.” (This from a cataloger responding to the observation that his customers were reading a budget home magazine.)

• ”This garment is for when the grandchildren take you on a Sunday drive from the nursing home.” (This from a cataloger handing off products to a design team.)

• Dead silence. (The answer I got from everyone in the room at a major cataloger in response to the question: “Has anyone in this room actually been inside the house of anyone who buys your products?”)

While a simple mismatch between the demographic of a catalog’s audience and the demographic of the catalog’s employees may be involved, the true problem is deeper that that.

If you can’t sympathize with your audience, you’re going to have a very tough time selling to them. To you, your audience may seem old, dowdy, overweight or ignorant. That’s not, however, how they see themselves. If you can’t feel true sympathy for them, you’d better learn to fake it compellingly. Otherwise, your catalog won’t sell.

“Has anybody seen any merchandise lately?”

I dreaded placing this call. The problem was sales. Despite a fine catalog and steady circulation, sales were tracking below plan. When the cataloger answered the phone, I said, “Well, I’m sorry about sales.”

“Why?” he asked. “We’re very happy with sales.”

“But ... the daily numbers ...”

“Yeah, we’ve had stocking issues.”

“So, your new line of office chairs?”

“No stock.”

“And the new desk accessories line?”

“Wish we had the merch.”

Why do catalogers spend months sweating to create beautiful new catalogs, and more months sweating about detailed circulation plans, only to blow it all by having empty shelves when customers’ calls begin?

As a longtime cataloger, I know that keeping merchandise in stock can be a huge challenge. But I also understand the dangers of overbuying. Most often, the stocking problems I’ve seen aren’t related to a fear of overbuying. They’re caused by a cataloger who simply fails to grasp the overwhelming significance of actually being able to fulfill orders when they arrive.

During the last few years I’ve seen the following:

• A gift cataloger sitting on almost 10 percent of his Christmas orders, unfulfilled (and unfulfillable) on Dec. 15. Reason: Nobody watched the back-order report.

• A mid-sized cataloger who couldn’t fulfill most of the new items in a major mailing. Reason: The cataloger started stocking too late, then couldn’t recover when problems arose.

• A gift cataloger who was out of stock on a major item most of the time for several years. Reason: The cataloger failed to press the supplier.

I could multiply these examples, but the key lesson is this: As a cataloger, you must work just as hard on stocking your shelves as you work on creating your catalog.

“Wow, that’s expensive!”

“How were Christmas catalog sales?”

“Very strong.”

“And fourth-quarter catalog sales?”

“Also strong.”

“Was the catalog profitable for the year?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re continuing the book this year?”

“No. It cost too much.”

The above conversation seems bizarre the first time you hear it. But if you stay in cataloging more than a couple years, you’ll find yourself repeatedly coming across catalogers who chop back their business, or even close it altogether, simply because the absolute cost levels seem high to them.

It’s not a matter of profitability. Many of these catalog programs are profitable or very close to it.

• One consistently profitable cataloger (whose catalogs had won national design awards) canceled all outside design help, and instead, had a local student design the catalogs. Sales declined, and the proprietor finally had to go out and get a job to cover costs.

• Another cataloger had virtually everything going for her: brand-name products, high price points, good margins, low operations costs, and she virtually owned her niche. Nevertheless, she squeezed so hard on costs that her catalog became a photo-free zone. Response rates dropped, so she cut costs further.

• A cataloger, whose title had grown rapidly and profitably for several years, fired all outside help, and let the color house Mac operator design the pages—then wondered why sales declined. Another cataloger, selling very upscale items, switched to a local photographer who shot all new items scattered on the studio’s floor.

• Still another gift cataloger consistently mails only to very cheap lists—no matter how terrible the response. It refuses to rent more expensive lists—even when response can be verified by actual tests to more than offset the cost.

• Before upgrading his catalog, one food cataloger decided to outsource all his telemarketing and fulfillment first. Then he spent three years bitterly complaining about the high cost of the outside service, while not touching his catalog, which was literally hand-drawn in house.

Occasionally, such extremes of cost-cutting can be traced to real financial need. But in my experience, that’s a rare circumstance. Most often, it’s caused by a catalog manager who looks at the invoices, blanches at the absolute dollars and decides to cut back, with no calculations of cost versus benefit, or revenue minus cost equals profitability.

The lesson: Don’t do that! Costs can’t be measured against an absolute scale. They must be measured on a relative scale, compared with the income they bring in.

Susan McIntyre is president of McIntyre Direct, a catalog consulting company based in Portland, OR. She can be reached at (503) 735-9515.