Three Tips from Catalog Veteran Morlee Griswold, Catalog Director, Patagonia

Interestingly, even established catalog companies can make mistakes following these steps. In the past year, Patagonia cut catalog circulation by one-third in favor of e-marketing, only to find sales drop. Further, Patagonia’s twice annual closeout sales have been so popular, the company’s Web site has threatened to crash under the load. And lastly, the success of one new product line was so great, Griswold says that the company’s warehouse had difficulty getting the orders out the door in a timely fashion. The lesson here is that everyone makes mistakes on the path to growth. Patagonia has taken steps to solve each of these problems as they’ve cropped up, and still manage to grow the business.