Road Runner Sports drills deep into its customer files to provide rewarding direct marketing

By Melissa Sepos

“Catalogs that offer sporting goods are extremely broad [in audience] and it is very difficult to talk to [customers] the way they want to be talked to,” says Bill Ness, COO of RRS, about its niche. “Instead of trying to find a catalog buyer, we find runners. It is extremely targeted. Most catalog companies turn over their customer file every two years. It is not the case with us. We saw close to half our customers in 1999 come back to us in 2000.”