SkyMall: The Ultimate Catalog Business Model

The SkyMall telemarketing operation also handles complaints, and each TSR is empowered to take the necessary actions to guarantee the customer is satisfied.

The Merchant Partners

For catalogers, whose prospecting costs are horrific, SkyMall represents a minor godsend—right up there with the ingenious cooperative database. Worsley has handed catalogers the extraordinary opportunity of reaching a captive audience of 500 million affluent prospects—many of whom are stuck in a plane for one to five hours and probably bored out of their skulls. His model leaves a catalog merchant with absolutely no circulation costs, no printing, no binding, no list rental and no postage—just orders from self-selected customers. Given the horrific cost of prospecting, merchant partners are delighted to give SkyMall a huge percentage of their markup—sometimes all of it—in return for a new customer who purchases 2.1 items at $110 on order.