Sitting Pretty

"We take our catalog profits, which are of a fairly high margin, and reinvest them in media buys that boost general awareness of the product, boost retail sales and lead to more catalog requests," Toscanini explains. She says that's Shlensky's business philosophy.

Toscanini considers the close channel integration a good thing. "This allows us to avoid channel conflict. The synergy [among the various media] is unbelievable," she asserts. "We know when we drop 3 million catalogs four times a year, point-of-sale retail skyrockets." Similarly, she says, online activity generally spikes when magazines drop and when TV ads run.