1. When pinpointing your catalogโs 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). โThen find a picture of someone who meets that ideal, and hang it up so your staff knows exactly for whom theyโre working,โ 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, โDonโt picture all merchandise the same size and square inch,โ says Fletcher.โYouโre losing money that way. If you offer
Creative
How long does it actually take to produce a catalog? The answer depends on if youโre trying to do it the textbook way or the other way โฆ March 20th. The phone rings. New cataloger: โHi, 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?โ โYou want to be in the mail in 10 days, and youโre starting the list process now?โ โYou bet. I wanted to leave you plenty of time.โ 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: โI need this item to be pictured a little smaller for it to pay for itself.โ Art director: โIf we just cut the copy, we probably can make the picture a little bigger and still take up less total space. People donโt read anyway.โ Copywriter: โIโve already cut the copy three times, and now thereโs barely enough room to give even the product dimensions and SKU number.โ 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: โI need this item to be pictured a little smaller for it to pay for itself.โ Art director: โIf we just cut the copy, we probably can make the picture a little bigger [โฆ]
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 โgut feelingโ 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 youโre guilty of stale or ineffectual catalog creative, ask yourself the following questions. โAm I employing copy thatโs appropriate for b-to-b customers in particular?โ โB-to-b products tend to be more practical because theyโre meant to help customers solve business problems,โ says Sarah Fletcher, president of Charlestown, R.I.-based Catalog Design Studios, a catalog consultancy. You canโt 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
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
For Edward Don & Co., supplying โeverything but the foodโ has long been its motto. The foodservice equipment supplier sells its customers, including Applebeeโs 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 โDonโ catalogs for the latest trends in how to use a martini glass to serve chocolate mousse, the same restaurant managers arenโt likely to buy a new $10,000 refrigerator unit off the page of a catalog. So Donโs 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 isnโt 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, Landsโ End, J. Jill, Victoriaโs Secret, Williams-Sonoma, Ross-Simons, Pottery Barn, The Sharper Image, Cabelaโs 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. โA merchandising vision is simply an understanding of the customer and his or her lifestyle,โ he explains. But, according to Howard, it is one of the most difficult topics for catalogers to grasp. Most donโt truly understand the importance of merchandising, he laments. While numbers are the foundation of good merchandise planning, a lot of people