A Chat With July’s Profile, Doug Mockett, founder/owner of Doug Mockett & Co.

CS: How did you get your start in the catalog business?
DM: I majored in English in college and then got an M.B.A. in marketing and a minor in management and worked in the advertising business for quite a while. The thing that was really frustrating with the ad biz., I don’t care what anybody says, it’s really hard to measure return on an ad. I noticed working for ad agencies that when things didn’t go well you were a goat, and when things went well the client was a hero. You’re kind of stuck in this neverland of never being able to take credit for anything. The client always took the credit.
And I’d been interested in direct marketing for some time — I read a couple of books on it. My first entry into it was I wrote a book and sold it mail order through ads. It was pretty successful. Then I sold the venture and got into the furniture components business. My first thought was that nobody would be interested in distributing these parts. These are an ideal direct marketing part. So I started with press releases because, honestly, I was absolutely flat broke. Started with press releases, then ran some ads and then printed single-sheets with the product and mailed them out. And then maybe a four-page, then eight-, then 12- and now we’ve got a 300-page catalog.