A Chat With September’s Profile, Scott Drayer, director of marketing, Paul Fredrick MenStyle

CS: Has it been an emphasis at Paul Fredrick to generate more business online?
SD: Yeah, I think it’s kind of a natural progression. It’s pretty effective for us to be able to acquire a customer online. We recognized several years ago that if we were going to rely purely on mailing a catalog to somebody in order to generate a prospect, we were going to be in trouble. So we developed a few different ways through online, through print, through alternative media programs, ways to acquire customers. That’s really, really helped our business.
I think something like in 2001, 87 percent of the new customers that we acquired were generated from a prospecting catalog. And I think at this point it’s less than 45 percent. Now that’s not necessarily a shift. We’re still kind of growing that catalog number, but the additional means of prospecting have really generated a lot of new customers for us and helped us grow our housefile and grow our business.