Plan Next Year’s Catalog Program

It isn’t enough simply to identify your 10 best and 10 worst sellers. A really thorough analysis will turn up a lot of information you can use to strengthen your program next year. Following are some examples:

• A regional specialty cataloger had been merchandising its catalog on the basis of ease-of-buying-and-stocking (hard goods are easy to buy, easy to pick, no sizes, no colors, few returns). But it discovered from the catalog’s product sales report that what actually was selling best were sized-apparel items — with all of the associated color, size and returns problems.