Creative

1. When pinpointing your catalog’s target demographic, strive to know everything there is to know about your ideal customer, including gender, age, ethnic background, hobbies/interests, even personal characteristics (e.g., active, curious, intellectual, humorous). “Then find a picture of someone who meets that ideal, and hang it up so your staff knows exactly for whom they’re working,” advises Sarah Fletcher, creative director of Catalog Design Studios, a Charlestown, R.I.-based catalog agency. 2. When deciding how much space to allot for each product in your print catalog, “Don’t picture all merchandise the same size and square inch,” says Fletcher.”You’re losing money that way. If you offer

How long does it actually take to produce a catalog? The answer depends on if you’re trying to do it the textbook way or the other way … March 20th. The phone rings. New cataloger: “Hi, I just printed my first catalog, so now I need some lists. Can you get me some lists so I can mail my catalog by the end of this month?” “You want to be in the mail in 10 days, and you’re starting the list process now?” “You bet. I wanted to leave you plenty of time.” Producing a catalog basically is a two-part process,

If you work among the creative staff at your catalog company, you may hear the following discussion from time to time: Merchant: “I need this item to be pictured a little smaller for it to pay for itself.” Art director: “If we just cut the copy, we probably can make the picture a little bigger and still take up less total space. People don’t read anyway.” Copywriter: “I’ve already cut the copy three times, and now there’s barely enough room to give even the product dimensions and SKU number.” Many people say nobody reads anymore, so you might as well show bigger pictures

If you work among the creative staff at your catalog company, you may hear the following discussion from time to time: Merchant: “I need this item to be pictured a little smaller for it to pay for itself.” Art director: “If we just cut the copy, we probably can make the picture a little bigger […]

Problem: Office supplies cataloger Corporate Express Canada needed to centralize its copy and images to enable easier multichannel publishing. Solution: Executives implemented a content management system that allows product data to be repurposed across multiple marketing channels. Results: Corporate Express Canada streamlined its processes by, for example, reducing its number of applicable databases from eight to two and reducing its head count. Corporate Express Canada, the Canadian division of U.S.-based office supplies cataloger Corporate Express, needed an easy and efficient way to manage its product information. Executives at this business-to-business catalog wanted the ability to store images and merchandise descriptions

quare inch analysis (SQUINCH) is an extraordinary tool for consumer and business catalogers alike. Sorted and executed the right way, a comprehensive SQUINCH can serve as a creative road map to your catalog campaigns, just as your contact strategy defines the plan from a marketing perspective. A comprehensive square inch analysis allows you to evaluate product sales and placement to determine whether the right product, price point or category is given the appropriate amount of space in the right location in your catalog. And by basing the analysis on customer behavior, as culled through transactional data, you can keep your “gut feeling” from being

Many business-to-business (b-to-b) catalogers fail to periodically refresh their creative elements and end up making common mistakes in copywriting, photography, layout and design. To discern if you’re guilty of stale or ineffectual catalog creative, ask yourself the following questions. “Am I employing copy that’s appropriate for b-to-b customers in particular?” “B-to-b products tend to be more practical because they’re meant to help customers solve business problems,” says Sarah Fletcher, president of Charlestown, R.I.-based Catalog Design Studios, a catalog consultancy. You can’t sell on emotion in a b-to-b catalog like you can in a consumer catalog, she continues. Gina Valentino, vice president and general manager

For Edward Don & Co., supplying “everything but the food” has long been its motto. The foodservice equipment supplier sells its customers, including Applebee’s Restaurants and the Opryland Hotel, a range of items, from serving glasses, plates and napkins, to kitchen utensils, stoves and fryers. While those clients enjoy browsing their “Don” catalogs for the latest trends in how to use a martini glass to serve chocolate mousse, the same restaurant managers aren’t likely to buy a new $10,000 refrigerator unit off the page of a catalog. So Don’s 11 business-to-business (b-to-b) catalog titles always will be an integral part of the

Truly effective multichannel marketing is an ongoing challenge for most catalogers. Ultimately, you want to deliver consistent customer experiences across all your sales channels, right? Although there isn’t one formula for success, there are a growing number of multichannel commerce tools that can help you achieve that goal. One such tool is a virtual catalog, defined by Chicago-based the e-tailing group as an almost exact replica of your print catalog integrated by varying degrees into your Web site, as opposed to a simple menu of products. By using a virtual catalog, customers can experience the aesthetics of a print catalog as well as

What do companies like L.L. Bean, Coldwater Creek, Lands’ End, J. Jill, Victoria’s Secret, Williams-Sonoma, Ross-Simons, Pottery Barn, The Sharper Image, Cabela’s and Frontgate have in common? They all have a clear merchandise vision, says Chuck Howard, president of Howard Consulting, a Rockville, MD-based catalog consulting firm. “A merchandising vision is simply an understanding of the customer and his or her lifestyle,” he explains. But, according to Howard, it is one of the most difficult topics for catalogers to grasp. Most don’t truly understand the importance of merchandising, he laments. While numbers are the foundation of good merchandise planning, a lot of people