Viking Catalog - Putting It All Together (3,692 words)

Business-to-business Mega-Cataloger Viking Office Products Thinks Locally

Across a Vast Global Workflow

Founded in 1960, Viking Office Products is legendary for its customer service. But as the Torrance, CA-company expands into more and more countries around the world, another remarkable story is taking shape: International business done with the local culture in mind. For the challenge of keeping the Viking brand intact across national boundaries, and in spite of cultural differences, streamlined asset management and workflow are a major aid.

Prior to Viking's merger with Office Depot, sales in fiscal 1998 were approximately $1.5 billion, all through mail order. Viking's annual sales are no longer reported separately from the parent company: Office Depot's worldwide consolidated sales for fiscal 1999 are $10.3 billion. This figure includes the Office Depot retail, contract, direct mail and Internet sales in addition to Viking direct mail—with active accounts worldwide of approximately 3 million, and an extraordinary customer retention rate of about 70 percent.

The Viking catalog trade in 11 countries last year reached the overwhelming mass of 53,000 pages, 900 mailings and 298 million copies produced.

"In 1999 if you laid our catalog pages end to end, we printed enough to travel to the moon 13 times or around the earth 125 times," says Rex Ciavola, vice president for catalog production at Office Depot/Viking, who oversees this huge operation in eight languages at nine creative-services facilities (two in the United States—one each for Office Depot and Viking, seven abroad in the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Japan and Australia). These facilities host a staff of 175 creative, prepress, print production and systems-support individuals. The global team produces buyers' guides and monthly sale and prospect catalogs in every country.

Remembering Who They Are

Prior to his five-year career at Viking, Ciavola was a member of the sales force for Quebecor Printing, where Viking was his largest account.

Ciavola explains that the Viking brand identity "has not changed a heartbeat [since the acquisition]." As for the Office Depot brand identity, it went through a series of changes and different tag lines, "and now we've taken it back to 'taking care of business,' a true identity which separates us from the crowd of superstores. Dave Fuente, who heads the combined companies, has taken us back to that marketing theme."

Office Depot remains the retail presence of the combined company, while the name Viking was retained because of the valuable brand identity it has to customers in the direct mail/catalog world. Office Depot has catalogs and retail inserts to drive store traffic and direct mail sales. Both brands also have e-commerce sites.

While Office Depot is "the powerhouse in America," Ciavola relates, "Viking's infrastructure overseas is dominant over any other office supply company. Our distribution channel, our logistics, our operations overseas are one of the primary reasons that Office Depot wanted to acquire Viking; because now Office Depot is using that infrastructure to help grow itself overseas on the retail and contract sides."

In France and Japan, there is both a Viking mail-order business and Office Depot retail stores. The company currently operates Office Depot retail stores only (without a Viking operation) in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mexico and Israel. "This gives Viking world potential in countries we're not in because Depot's already there, and vice versa. So we've got unbelievable growth potential overseas," says Ciavola.

Every country worldwide shares a verbal, tacit company business strategy, which is the one Viking's retired chairman, now Office Depot Vice Chairman Irwin Helford created in the 1980s and has maintained internationally wherever Viking does business.

While the details are secret, Ciavola will say this: "[The business strategy] really is the Viking brand identity. Everything is branded in the books and on the Internet. Irwin has stated for years that it's not what you say or even what you do for the customer that matters, it's how you make them feel."

Product functionality and value characterize the Viking brand image. Margaret Smoke, director of creative services worldwide, explains, "We are not as copy-heavy as some other books. We are not selling a lifestyle, that's why. So it's more about the benefit of using the product. We all believe when you're bombarded by a lot of catalogs, you'd like to read as little as possible. Our company philosophy dictates short bullets with functions."

Value is emphasized to small- to medium-sized businesses. Lynn Puskar, manager of print production, says of the company's paper selection: "Generally for prospecting books, we buy a more economical paper because you mail more, and from a Viking standpoint, you want to [carry across] an image of being more cost-conscious."

Worldwide Workflow

Producing localized catalogs targeted to specific countries has always been fundamental to Viking's business model, but all production had been centralized in the United States. While the United States remains the central hub for the worldwide systems and holds the main repository of high-resolution images, Viking now handles far more of the production in the individual countries in which it operates, making the process more efficient and cost effective.

International satellite locations work in low-resolution, then send finished pages back to the United States where OPI (open prepress interface) and prepress are completed. Localized catalogs are then printed on the continent where they will be distributed.

In December 1996, with new business opportunities and complex technical requirements mounting, Viking was outgrowing its desktop publishing operation and OPI server. OPI is a feature offered within graphics systems.

"We had a homegrown legacy system we built ourselves before the Media/Bridge system," says Ciavola. "It was a software application on a Novell server and it was our basic workflow system for creative services, still plugging in to the software we still use today, like Quark and Adobe. Going into prepress, we were a full analog shop, before OPI, so we did a manual swap out of the low-resolution information that we used in creative services to the high-resolution information that we archived on our Novell server."

Viking needed an overhaul that would include OPI functionality and full production management and tracking across their global wide area network. The company turned to Cascade Systems, now Media/Bridge Technologies Inc., of Acton, MA. Media/Bridge installed a customized solution of DataFlow and ImageFlow systems.

A fully configurable data and workflow management system, DataFlow handles multiple data types and provides instant access to all information through a graphical user interface.

In addition, DataFlow tracks job progress, monitors workflow and archives content. ImageFlow, an OPI server, provides pre-flight checking for PostScript output, intelligent spooling and queue management to optimize the use of output devices. Both digital and analog output are supported by the system, as some of the printers Viking uses require film.

Ciavola confirms that this system stays "up" 99 percent of the time.

All creative design and language versions are done within Quark, so each country is doing its own design and own language copy, he says.

According to Ciavola, "A good feature is the Media/Bridge calendaring system—so we know who's working on a page, how long they worked on it. It tracks the page as it goes from person to person, and keeps a log of everything you do."

The installation of the Media/Bridge solution worldwide went smoothly, says Ciavola.

"We did it ourselves with limited outside help. It took four months to put it into six facilities. Each facility had a two- to three-week training period. We installed each one of these systems in parallel to their existing system, and then trained them fully on Media/Bridge, then made a three-month-long transition off of their existing NT-based system onto the Media/Bridge/UNIX platform."

Gert Vigener, creative services manager for Germany, says, "We've used the Media/Bridge content management system here for several months—it helps a bigger art department avoid mistakes. It helps prepress save about 20 minutes per page; so if we lose a minute, we know we will save 19 at the end at prepress."

Jeff Medve, director of worldwide prepress operations, says, "Prepress is the essential link from the Office Depot and Viking creative departments to our printing companies worldwide. We provide creative departments with image scans and modifications of existing scans necessary for catalog page creation, and the printing companies with the high-resolution output necessary for web offset plating and rotogravure cylinder engraving."

The department works closely with print production to ensure all production schedules are met.

"Last year we received over 52,500 individual catalog pages from the creative departments worldwide," explains Medve. "Our scanning department received over 8,250 new image and modification requests. Challenging workloads and tight production schedules did not interfere with meeting all printer deadlines and catalog delivery dates. Our prepress department's output ranks us as one of the largest prepress service bureaus in the world."

The ultra-efficient international workflow Viking boasts is what enables it to offer personalized catalogs. Without its superior technology, it would be difficult for each country to write its own copy, design its books individually, or merchandise them according to each country's cultural preferences. Viking's workflow allows it to adhere to its local business philosophy and develop brand identity in myriad countries.

Fitting in to the Local Landscape

"Our business philosophy is that we want to be a local business in each country, not the big American company coming over to do business," says Ciavola. "So we hire management and staff from that country to run their business with us overseeing it from America, and the brand identity then in that country is unique for that country."

"So for example," he says, "we know that in Germany they don't use liquid white-out. They use a tape-dispenser style of white-out. They don't use hanging folders, they have filing systems built into their cabinetry. They don't buy the same product line that we sell in America. So we sell what the German business community wants to use."

In Japan, Ciavola says, "You can't sell as much cut sheet paper at a time. If they go to our store, they take public transit. If we deliver to them, they still have no place to put it because their offices are quite small. This affects product bundling: The Japanese buy smaller orders more frequently."

The product photographs used in the international books are photos of the product for that country, with accompanying copy in that country's language. "A main part of our brand identity is Irwin Helford's photo on the front cover or the country managers in Japan, Italy or France," says Ciavola. "We also show some warehouse and delivery people in certain countries."

Also, product size measurement is tailored to whichever system is used in that country, and even packaging labels are nationally specific.

"In Holland," says Smoke, "they like [to use] stronger colors like orange and green, and we allow that. With a monthly sales book, you can still tell from the body pages that it's Viking, but with a stronger tint. In Japan, they like milder colors, so we go with those, especially white." In every country, Viking employs local artists who know the country's "flavor," as Smoke puts it. Germany doesn't like the color black, Italy doesn't like purple, and Japan doesn't like red—"they say it looks cheap," notes Smoke.

Print Production Manager Lynn Puskar says, "We're in the process of putting together style guides for all the countries, for catalog production. Each country's style guide would be a little bit different."

"We use the U.S. as a guinea pig," says Smoke. "It's a big department, so we can react to last-minute crises. If something tests well here, we can roll it out in other countries."

Personal Offers

Regardless of country, one-to-one marketing is key to Viking's success, Ciavola emphasizes. "The personalization side is what makes all the difference in the world, whether it's in print or on the Internet," he says.

Personalization of print vehicles takes place via three major technologies, Ciavola reports:

1.) Conventional ink jet personalization on the binding lines (saddle-stitch and perfect bound);

2.) Super ink jet (a Viking house term) involving Scitex inkjetting offline on a cover in color with precise placement, which is then taken to the bindery and bound in postal sequence;

3.) Digital four-color personalization using Xeikon technology; full four-color variability (personalized one to one) on the covers, again taken to the bindery.

"We perform all three of these personalization functions in the U.S. and Europe, and we do just the ink jet personalization in Japan and Australia," Ciavola adds.

Internet and database marketing manager Michelle Williams says, "The way we decide which of the three personalization modes to use [on a versioned book] isn't by customer, it's by what we call an 'effort.' Each time we go out with the monthly sale catalog, and at the beginning of the year we decide when our peak times are going to be on sales, and when we need to actually surpass prior years' sales, when we need an extra lift; and we know the digital[ly personalized] catalogs give us the biggest lift. So we will strategically place those catalogs in certain months. We are testing super ink jet right now; we're not sure where it will fit in our mail plan in the future."

From here, Puskar says, "We do so many versions in so many countries that there are always numerous books being worked on at one time, so my job is really to keep everyone on track and organized.

For instance, she explains that all printing for the United States is done here; for Europe it's done in the United Kingdom (and some in Hungary); printing for Australia and Japan is done in those countries, respectively.

"The issues we run into are pretty much the same in all the countries. Things like technical breakdowns on binders, which cause delays, and a great deal of problem solving. We never want to miss a drop date," says Puskar.

What about communication? "Production coordinators report to me here in the U.S. and overseas, so when I come in in the morning I know what's gone on around the world," Puskar says.

Smoke underlines the need for auxiliary, personal communication to ensure deadlines are met: "We use e-mail and the phone—conference calls between merchandising, advertising and marketing are popular during production—and we even call each other at home for serious issues like budget, staffing or equipment. It's very close knit. If someone needs help we send people to their country. If France has a problem and can't produce its book, we'll do it in the U.S."

The Private-Sale Concept

Viking has won numerous awards for personalization and one-to-one and database marketing, based on warehoused customer information and sales history by SKU that goes back to 1984.

"We've continually improved the way we store and reuse/repurpose that information. We use a variety of technologies both internally and externally with our printer, as well as on the Internet to one-to-one market using that information," Ciavola says.

"Our big story is 'This private sale is for you.' We have a buying pattern on a customer—what/when/how they buy—and we offer private sales to that customer, and give them a good deal based on the products they buy most often, as well as give them incentive to buy additional products they don't normally buy. And so we personalize each one of our mailings to that specific customer using variable digital technologies at our printers."

In the United States, he continues, "you have specific customers where you want to sell them something on sale because you know that that will drive additional purchases. Other customers, if [you] give them something on sale, they'll buy it but they won't buy anything else, and all you're doing is harming your business and gaining nothing."

International exceptions occur, such as in Germany, where no company may offer premiums to certain customers based on different criteria.

Yet, says Williams, "Culturally, we're very similar throughout the world. Irwin Helford had this idea that folks are folks, and people like to buy from people no matter where they are in the world."

Williams works with a designated merchant who coordinates among her and the different product managers.

She says, "The merchant and I work out program ideas, then I do technical writing for selection criteria, run ideas against the data warehouse to see what kinds of numbers of people qualify for the programs we're looking at. If we don't get enough numbers we might go back to the drawing board and come up with a couple more programs. If it works, and we get the numbers we need, we give it to our MIS department which then does the selection."

Marketing works concurrently with creative. The latter's job is to get the covers done by the time the personalized books are ready to ship.

"Our ideal would be to have a full catalog tailored to a customer; with each page having products that customer uses, or complementary ones," Williams says.

Personalization on the Web

"On the Web," Williams explains, "we'd like to be able to track even further information than we do from phone or fax orders. We have personalized shopping lists on our Web site, where they can form basically different bios for each user [within a company]. We'd like to drive private sales off that, because that's basically the customer telling us what they like right there, even above the purchasing pattern. We have our own algorithms we've prepared, and we use them for private sales on the Internet," Williams continues.

Daily specials are shown to everyone who visits Vikingop.com. Beyond that, the benefits of logging in by name are private sales that immediately pop up, which change on a weekly basis, and private sales for a particular business, generated bys an SIC (standard industry code).

Williams points out that Viking targets small- to medium-sized businesses, as part of the corporate strategy. "Small businesses are more cost- and quality-conscious," so this message carries through in communicating with those buyers.

How does Williams see the business-to-business model in general? "Within each business there are still people."

Bruce Nelson, president and CEO of Viking Office Products and president of Office Depot International echoes this notion: "While we have great catalogs, distribution centers and computer technology, what really makes the difference between us and our competitors is our people."

Nelson points out that a sign at the front door of the Viking building in Torrance says: "Through this door pass the best employees in the industry."

And Interview with Gert Vigener

Recently a German reminded me of this not-very-funny joke: "What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. A person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. A person who speaks only one language? American." It is just this perception of the "ugly American" which Viking fights by doing business locally not merely in each country, but in each culture.

Gert Vigener is creative services manager at Viking Direkt GmbH in Grossostheim, Germany, where he has worked since 1995. The European headquarters for Viking are in Venlo, in the Netherlands close to the German border. Vigener offered some interesting details about the "local-culture business model" Viking adheres to:

How does your facility fit into the international picture?

We grew fast from 1995. Venlo has a warehouse, a big call center, personnel, finance, marketing, etc.—400 or 500 people are there, and if you count 'Rolfland' (we renamed the German, Belgian and Austrian territories after our boss, Rolf van Kaldekerken) we're about 1,000 employees altogether.

All my counterparts in Europe are working similarly, so it makes communication much easier. We can share ideas. My department reports directly to the U.S. headquarters. Usually we do meetings once or twice a year in London.

How is the cultural fitting done?

We in Germany have a special situation: We cannot have sale and regular prices out there at the same time. If we offer a pen for 99 cents on sale, it has to be the same throughout all the catalogs. If we do a misprint of 59 cents, we have to sell it in all the catalogs at that price. From our point of view, this is the biggest difference from the U.S. catalog. In Austria, though, you can use the regular Viking pricing philosophy.

In terms of copy, in general I have the feeling Germans like to read more—we use more words. More words means a smaller photo to sell from, of course, so it's a bit of a struggle.

Another big difference is service. We have our own big German competitors here, but we have better service. When we entered the market five years ago, the service we offered was unheard of in Germany. The notion of sending back merchandise you didn't want at our cost was very difficult for people to even understand!

Europe has a lot of small countries with strong identities. We would not dare put the German catalog in Austria, for instance, because there are two different words for January; they would know right off the bat that that was a book from Germany, because it would say 'Januar' and not 'Janner'."

How does the Viking corporate philosophy work for you?

I would say our catalogs are more conservative, but they are in the Viking style and we try to keep it this way. If we think this or that should be done in Germany, we discuss it with the U.S., and most of the time, as long as it's not too extreme, they go along with it. But we [also] have intensive contact with France, England or the Netherlands, for instance, and we adopt ideas from them.

Design Manager David Forrester invented the main style of the catalogs many years ago with Irwin Helford, and over the years this style has been modified, but didn't change much, because it's very successful. So we have style guidelines for all the books, which we follow very strictly, mainly to stay organized. In international companies, you have a lot of departments that have to work together. To know what we're doing, they need to know what rules we're following. —S. Shrake