Scale & Scope

By the end of the first year, Acorn Direct’s circulation reached 1 million. And four years later, only one person employed in the Stillwater, Minn., office had not previously worked for Rivertown Trading.

Find Your Focus

Since the catalog’s first mailing in 2001, a lot has been done to focus Acorn Direct’s product line. Knowing from previous experience that video customers would also buy non-video gifts, Acorn officials decided to offer both video and non-video products in their first catalog. Sticking to what similar catalogs had done in the past, the offerings were comprised of about 70 percent videos. Acorn executives had established relationships with British video distributors, and knew there was a market for that product. So deciding to work with what they knew — namely, home video programming — wasn’t difficult.