Sure Fit: Sitting Pretty

Liana Toscanini, vice president of insurgence (yes, insurgence) for Sure Fit Slipcovers by Mail, challenged authority seven years ago when she started a catalog and Web site for the 87-year-old slipcover manufacturer.

Retail and wholesale distribution has been Allentown, PA-based Sure Fit’s focus. It has sold its product, ready-made slipcovers, to retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond, and Target, as well as to cataloger LinenSource.

With an 85-percent share of the ready-made slipcover market, Toscanini told company president Bert Shlensky she believed direct marketing to consumers was an avenue for growth. Shlensky, a promoter of innovation and creativity among his employees, told her to go for it.

Toscanini’s hunch proved right. In five years, the company has created a $70 million catalog business.

Not unlike many start-up catalogs in recent history, Sure Fit was launched “off-the-page” with a tiny print ad in a magazine. But unlike other catalogers, the company has stuck with print advertising as its primary means of drawing in new prospects. “Media is how we’ve built our catalog business, and it’s what we continue to rely on.”

She describes Sure Fit’s catalog prospecting media as “pretty typical,” explaining that direct response space advertising in combination with direct response television (DRTV) have been the primary avenues it uses to reach its target audience: women ages 25 to 54 with above-average household incomes.

Sure Fit now uses a three-pronged approach to building its catalog business using print, TV and more recently, the Internet to generate catalog leads. Of the three prospecting media, print has the most productive cost per lead and cost per order. DRTV has the highest cost, but it drives a considerable amount of retail sales, which Toscanini says is hard to measure. And the Internet’s contribution to prospecting efforts is still being gauged.

Print Ads Started the Catalog

When Sure Fit launched its catalog in 1996, it started its marketing campaign by placing a 2˝ x 2˝ print ad in decorating magazine Country Living. The plan was to generate catalog requests, recalls Toscanini.

The ad, which cost the company $6,000 to place, brought in a whopping $25,000 in orders. “We knew we had a business,” Toscanini says of the catalog’s launch.

Today, Sure Fit spends $5 million a year on print advertising, mostly in shelter publications and women’s magazines. It has stepped up to running mostly full-page four-color ads, alternating those with 1/3-page and 1/6-page ads and BRCs. Sure Fit has a full-time freelance media planner who handles all of the space-ad placement.

Interestingly, Toscanini notes the full-page ads often get up-front right-hand page placement without paying a premium. She explains, “Fortunately for us, our ads being full pages with great images often get great placement.”

Sure Fit’s space ads are purely for catalog requests. “We haven’t sold any product directly,” says Toscanini. The complexity of buying slipcovers (i.e., colors, fabrics, sizing) has so far negated that possibility, she notes. “There’s some question as to how we would do that since our customers want selection above all else, and you can only show so much product [in an ad],” Toscanini says. “Ours is definitely a two-step buying process.”

DRTV in the Mix

Sure Fit spends another $5 million annually on DRTV. “We started with 30-second spots on HGTV. Now we run 60-second and 120-second ads on all the major, national cable programs, and they both perform well,” says Toscanini. The company also does some regional buys where it has a retail presence.

Since direct response air time is contingent upon availability, Sure Fit doesn’t get its pick of time slots. However, she says, the company also buys some program-specific space, for instance, on television’s “The View,” a weekday morning women’s program, when it’s available.

From a creative standpoint, the TV ads focus squarely on the product and the catalog. The catalog itself is featured prominently throughout a recently viewed 60-second spot, which was created by Direct Response Media.

The all-important call to action in this first step of a two-step sales process urges the viewer to dial the 800 number shown on the screen to get a free catalog. Sure Fit’s Web address also is shown on screen.

The Internet’s Promise

The Internet is the newest element in Sure Fit’s regular prospecting mix. “We know that 99 percent of the people who come to our site order a catalog,” says Toscanini.

“The Internet is our newest lead-generation tool,” she continues. “We’re only spending about $300,000 on it now, but we’re looking to do more online, because it has such a low cost per lead.”

So far, says Toscanini, the Internet isn’t bringing in much unique business; it’s primarily used by customers as an ordering tool. However, she sees some real potential there since 40 percent of the company’s’ direct sales now are coming in via the Web site, www.surefit.com.

To bring some new prospects to the site, Sure Fit placed traffic-building banner ads on targeted Web sites like clubmom.com. The first test took place between June 11 and July 11. While online has a lower cost per lead, the back-end results seem to be weaker, too, Toscanini admits. However, she adds, “It’s still too early to see the whole picture.”

As she explains, “We’re still collecting orders from one-time catalog request fulfillment. I expect to generate additional orders with subsequent catalog mailings [to those names].”

The Future

Sure Fit considers its venture into catalog marketing a success on two fronts: It’s generating sales—the average order value from the catalogs is $145—and the catalog profits are feeding back into the main business to create a synergistic marketing loop.

“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.

Meanwhile, other media that Sure Fit has tested haven’t performed as well. “We tried a couple of card packs with no success. And we tested newspaper advertising, with so-so results.”

That doesn’t mean Toscanini won’t explore other avenues in the future. In fact, last month it made its first foray into prospecting via list rentals. The first test mailing dropped Aug. 4 and was targeted to upscale home furnishings catalog buyers.

While a prospect mailing in the early days of the catalog failed, Toscanini has high hopes this time. “When we originally started our catalog, it was only 16 pages, and we did a little list buying. It didn’t do well, so we went with advertising for leads.”

Now with an established catalog of 44 pages, she says, “I believe at this point, buying lists has the potential to work for us.”

Still, Sure Fit will continue to put most of its focus on the media that has worked for it in the past. “I’m a big believer in low-hanging fruit: Grab it where you can get it,” Toscanini says.

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Tips from the Pros: Using Space Ads

Spiegel is known for its catalog-request print ads in women’s fashion magazines. Kim Musgrave, customer acquisition manager, offered an inside look at what’s working for Spiegel.

• Test a reply envelope or a BRC. For Spiegel, having a full-page ad along with a response envelope helped to “break the ad” from the rest of the book, says Musgrave.

• Keep offers fresh. Charging for Spiegel’s big book but offering it for 50-percent off, plus a free handbag and $10 off an order worked for many years in national print advertising. “Now,” Musgrave notes, “with the majority of catalog companies offering catalogs for free, we’ve changed the offer to free to remain competitive, and are testing different purchase incentives to increase conversion to buyer and sales.”

• Using the word “free” and giving the value of the catalog has been successful.

• Negotiate when buying advertising space. “We have a lot of women’s magazines to choose from with similar demographics, so setting a ‘minimum discount’ level helps.” Given the advertising environment—currently, ad pages are down—Musgrave says magazines are willing to try harder to earn your business.

• Ask for added value. When Spiegel runs in a back-of-the-book, direct-response section, these ads usually are provided as added value for being a full-page advertiser.

Cushman’s, a Florida-based fruit cataloger, brings in 60 percent of its new-to-file buyers via space ads, mostly in newspapers. Allen Cushman, president, shared some ideas for creating ads that sell.

• Focus on the headline. “The most important thing [in journalism] is the headline on the story. Same with the ad,” he says. Cushman’s has tested straightforward headlines but found that the intriguing, “What the devil is this?” drew the best response.

• Look to your other media efforts for successful copy platforms to test in your print ads. The winning Cushman’s headline mentioned above was adapted directly from a mail piece written earlier by copywriter Christopher Stagg.

• Tell a story. A good way to get readers involved in your ad, and hopefully in your product, is to tell a story, suggests Cushman.