A Chat With March’s Profile, Martin Smith, CEO of MindWare

CS: What were the biggest challenges for you personally and the catalog industry as a whole when you started in the business?
MS: I’m not sure that my memory goes back that far. Well it was a whole new business — I had had virtually no exposure to direct and all the ways of measuring efficiency and productivity, which are specific to the direct business. So there was a personal learning curve getting familiar with the catalog industry. At that time, what were the big issues? Frankly, I think a lot of the issues which have been on the concern ever since then, and probably before then. Issues like cost of mailing catalogs, the high cost of getting a catalog in the customers’ hands. I don’t recall other specific issues from that time.