A Chat With January’s Profile, Ann Killeen, General Manager of Montessori Services

Catalog Success: What are the catalog’s customer demographics?
Ann Killeen: We have a split demographic — we service Montessori teachers and schools as well as the parents of the children who attend Montessori schools.

CS: What classifies as a Montessori school?
AK: Montessori was started by Maria Montessori 100 years ago. She was the first woman physician in Italy and she observed children. From there, using sort of a scientific approach, she developed a very hands-on method for education where essentially it recognizes that children learn by doing things and repeating. One child might want to do something only once or twice, but some child might want to do it 50 times. Allowing the children to do those things repetitively, those children will be able to teach themselves. The job of the teacher is to create the right environment for the child to be able to learn. And provided with the right environment, and just a small amount of guidance, that child can learn on their own.

CS: The number of Montessori schools in the U.S.?
AK: There’s certainly thousands. One of the things that was interesting to me when I first started here is I didn’t realize how many public Montessori schools there are and that Montessori goes all the way from preschool through high school. Although certainly in the United States it’s more common in preschool and elementary school, but there are middle and high schools that are Montessori schools.

CS: What is the catalog’s primary merchandise?
AK: Materials used in a Montessori classroom — toys/games and books for children at home to support a Montessori. Toys, games and books is a little narrow. Our two strengths in the Montessori market are preparing the environment and practical life. Preparing the environment is sort of what I talked about with Montessori, setting up the right environment for the work to be able to be done. Sometimes it’s setting things out on a tray, so we might sell the trays; or being able to sit on the floor and work, so we might sell rugs to roll out on the floor. Storing things in clear plastic boxes so the child can find it and get at it easily and can be put away in a neat manner for the next child to be able to use. We sell a lot of items that are for preparing the environment. Really, our biggest category we sell is called ‘practical life.’ Practical life would include cleaning things, kids love to sweep or wipe the counter. Kids love to help out in those ways, but a regular broom is hard for a three-year-old to use. So we offer brooms, mops, little dust brooms — all kinds of things that you could use for cleaning that are child-size. A big thing in Montessori is to learn by doing, but part of it is to learn realistically by doing. For example, in Montessori there’s use of a lot of glass. It doesn’t use pretend things but uses more real things. So if you’re going to pour with a pitcher, you’re going to use a glass pitcher. So we’re going to sell a glass pitcher that’s going to fit in a child’s-size hand. They learn that if they drop it, it breaks. It’s learning that real, practical experience. Pouring is a big part, transferring, washing, cleaning up, cooking, etc. So food preparation, we have little things like a banana slicer so they can lay the banana down and it sets down and slices the whole banana. Or child-size utensils, aprons, oven mitts — those kinds of things. We do kits for learning sewing, all of the steps of learning to sew, from something really basic to something more complex. Woodworking, including real tools. A real saw, a real hammer, a real measuring tape, level — those types of things that kids can learn how to really use real tools. Gardening is a big aspect. Every Montessori school has some sort of garden in it. The way that Montessori is taught requires a teacher to go out and find a lot of items that are at a lot of different places. You would think that we would just go to toy shows, but we don’t. We go to hardware shows, we go to houseware shows, we go to all different types of shows. It sort of reflects that a teacher would have to go to all different kinds of stores and places to gather these things. The owner of the company, Jane Campbell, who started the company 31 years ago, recognized that it’s very time consuming for a Montessori school teacher to have to go around and collect all of these things. It’s really to provide, and that’s why it’s called Montessori Services. It’s to provide a service to teachers where we can gather those things for them so they can focus their time on teaching.

CS: How many catalogs do you publish and what is the SKU count of those catalog(s)?
AK: We have two catalogs, our 92-page main book has nearly 1,750 SKUs. And that’s the bulk of our products. We have maybe another 200-300 in our parent book that aren’t in our teacher book.

CS: How often are both catalogs mailed?
AK: We only print each of the two books once a year. We’re mailing the teacher book, which we call our school catalog, four times a year. Right now the parent book is mailed three times a year. And then we mail a small, 16-page supplement once a year.

CS: When did you join Montessori Services?
AK: I haven’t been here that long, I joined in June of this year (2007).

CS: What was your biggest initial challenge upon joining Montessori Services?
AK: Being able to come in and make change, but at the same time respect the history of the brand and the knowledge of the people who were here. Balance — not lose the integrity and what had already been built but also make change to make things more efficient.

CS: What techniques did you use to help you overcome that challenge?
AK: I tried to do things, whenever I could, collaboratively. I made sure to try and include as many people as possible in the process so that they feel their input is being given. I think it showed I’m willing to do things hands-on, willing to pick in the warehouse, willing to enter orders in the call center. I think that people then know you understand their job if you do their job.

CS: What are the key factors that attribute to Montessori Services’ success?
AK: I think that Jane [company’s owner] has very high values. The Montessori community is small and being true to your values is very respected in this community. Everything is done in the most ethical way possible — from the way the product is selected to customer service all the way down the line.

CS: What about the catalog industry appeals most to you?
AK: Two things. One, I like every year trying to do things a little better than the year before. Working a little smarter, working a little more efficiently. A lot of times that means technology. I started out in IT, so I appreciate that through technology we can work more efficiently. The other thing is I like always having a new challenge. I’ve personally worked at several different catalog companies and I think what’s interesting are those things that are the same in all the companies, and what’s equally or more interesting is what’s unique in each of those companies. How at each place you can see a challenge and figure out a way to address it.

CS: What effect did the May ‘07 postal rate increase have on the catalog?
AK: The truth is I didn’t come till June so I’m not positive what was done. I don’t think we made changes, but we don’t have very high circulation.

CS: What is the catalog’s circulation?
AK: With both books combined we’re at 550,000 a year.

CS: How did you get your start in the catalog business?
AK: I started in 1989 working for Storybook Heirlooms, where I was director of IT and then director of inventory planning, for eight years. I was one of the five original people in the startup. I saw that company from nothing to $30 million dollars for those eight years. So that was a great experience. And then I went to Tzabaco, which was sort of a general merchandise marketed to gay men and women. I was first involved with inventory planning and then later operations and marketing. I also worked at Boudin for a short time, which is a San Francisco sourdough bread company. And then I worked for Real Goods for about three years, where I was vice president of marketing, inventory planning, IT and Web. Then I worked at Bullock & Jones for five years as the director of IS and also responsible for marketing.

CS: What’s the biggest mistake you made in the business and how did you recover from that mistake?
AK: At Storybook Heirlooms we started out selling high-end bedroom furniture and we had a gorgeous catalog. We learned pretty quickly, fortunately, that furniture is complicated to deliver and that a significant part of mail order is having people rebuy from you. Because we were selling complete furniture sets, they would buy once and then they didn’t rebuy. In either our first or second catalog we put in a small insert of apparel and within a year we were an apparel catalog. We learned really fast that apparel was a much better niche for us. The second thing we learned was that if we could do our own manufacturing we could really establish ourselves in our niche. We could establish uniqueness because we were designing and manufacturing it ourselves. Plus get a better margin.

CS: What are some of the qualities that helps set Montessori Services apart from its competition?
AK: I think that we’ve been around for a long time, which is an asset. Again our connection with the Montessori community is very strong. Jane [company owner] has a highly respected level of Montessori training. What I sort of spoke to before, I think that we stringently test every product before it goes into the catalog. And we stay very in touch with the Montessori community through attending Montessori conferences.

CS: What kind of things are done at the company to keep a light and fun environment?
AK: One of the products that we sell is a hand-cranked music box and one of them has the Happy Birthday song. So the accounting manager always goes around when it’s somebody’s birthday and hand cranks the Happy Birthday song and we sing. Right now during the peak periods the managers are taking turns bringing in snacks on Friday and on a couple of the days we’re doing lunches. Food seems to make people happy.

CS: Have you had any mentors in the catalog industry?
AK: The first was Estelle DeMuesy from Storybook Heirlooms. Estelle really helped me to develop as a manager. She mentored me along as a manager, but she helped me see how I could develop people who worked for me. Really my role as a supervisor is to make the people who report to me successful. That’s how I can see myself as successful, if I can make them be successful. I really liked that lesson. Another person is Jerry Machado, who started Storybook Heirlooms. He really taught me to try to focus on the things that could make a difference. One of the things that he would say is, ‘OK is that interesting information or is that information that’s going to help us change the business? And if it’s only interesting, then you don’t really spend your time on it. But if it’s really something that can help you change the business, then you focus on it.’ He also taught me that sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Really to go through and look at whether you could cost-justify something. So sometimes even a small cost isn’t worth doing because it doesn’t pay off, or sometimes you could make a big expenditure because you could see that there would be a big benefit. The third person I wanted to mention is Mark Swedlund. Mark was my supervisor at Real Goods. He really gave me the opportunity, as did Estelle, to do new things and take on new opportunities. He supported me through that and sort of it made it seem like, ‘OK, you can do this. Just take the next stop, it’s not that different.’

CS: What are your hobbies?
AK: I like to spend time with my family, but I’ve also trained in martial arts for 30 years. I have three black belts and I still teach arnis, which is a kind of Filipino stick-fighting.

CS: What would you have done as a career if you hadn’t become involved in the catalog industry?
AK: Well, I was a junior high school teacher when I started in catalog. I was teaching middle school science and basically I said to Jerry, who started Storybook Heirlooms, ‘I like computers.’ And he said, ‘OK, you’ll be the director of IT.’