Sundance Catalog spent years building a brand and an audience. Now it is spinning off in new directions

By Catalog Success Staff

Despite 10 years difference between Sundance Catalog and Rural Route 3, the books were developed in a remarkably similar fashion.

Sundance’s core book was started by four workers from the Sundance Ski Resort at the behest of Redford. Beck, who is now Sundance’s vice president of merchandising, has been with the catalog from its inception. He recalls a tenuous beginning during which experts told the foursome the catalog’s merchandise would never sell. The first mailing of Sundance Catalog yielded a higher-than-average response rate. The second mailing landed them $400,000 in debt.