A Chat With May’s Profile, Suzanne Vlietstra, president of Hobby Horse Clothing Co.

CS: What’s the catalog’s circulation?
SV: About 130,000. But remember those catalogs really drive sales into our stores, too. We have about 130 stores. We have this dealer network that we do a lot of marketing for them. A lot of consumers get our catalog and then go trotting into their local retailer to buy it. So compared to a pure-play cataloger that mails catalogs and gets the orders, we know that we drive a ton of sales into our stores. But we can’t prove it. One thing we’ve done when you talk about cataloging creativity … we have a clever little thing that we’re trying to do to prove that we’re driving those sales in. All of our garments that we sell have hang tags, all those things you rip off the sleeves. We have a contest [done online] on our hang tags that says, “Register the garment to win a $250 dollar gift certificate every month.” We don’t get a lot of entries, but it’s proving we can now close that loop and prove that we mailed a catalog to Jane Doe, Jane Doe went to Bobby’s Western wear and bought the shirt. And then Jane Doe registered the shirt she bought at Bobby’s Western wear, registers it with us, we can prove that our catalog mailing drove that sale.