Management

A Chat With May’s Profile, Suzanne Vlietstra, president of Hobby Horse Clothing Co.

Most fulfillment processes are largely manual in nature, as only the very largest companies can justify advanced automation. Looking at the total cost of back-end order fulfillment — including direct and indirect labor, occupancy, and shipping supplies — total labor generally makes up 60 percent to 65 percent. That excludes any shipping costs because they distort the comparisons. Benchmarking ShareGroups, a proprietary program in which participants share benchmarking data, reveals that labor rates were typically around $7 an hour five years ago. Today, they’ve reached $12 to $13 an hour for many direct marketing businesses, plus a 20 percent benefit rate. But overall productivity

Catalog Success: Where’s the company headquartered? Suzanne Vlietstra: Chino, California. That’s about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. CS: What are your catalog’s customer demographics? SV: Our customer is female; 30 to 50 [years of age]; college-educated; hundred thousand dollar household income, or greater; owns two horses; and horses are her passion. CS: When was the company established? When did you begin mailing catalogs? SV: I started the company when I was in junior high school. It was incorporated in 1987 while I was in high school. I didn’t mail a catalog until 1991. I always wanted to. When I was

Editor’s Note: Beginning this week, we’ll bring you an operations and fulfillment tip of the week, courtesy of the consulting firm, F. Curtis Barry & Co. These tips will lead up to our inaugural interactive workshop for multichannel merchants on choosing direct commerce systems. (See below for more details.) — Paul Miller, editor-in-chief While converting from one order management system to another, it’s best not to try to convert the open customer orders and open purchase orders. Instead, rekey these to eliminate the risk of improper conversion. This also gives the staff a little extra “practice” with the system. Catalog Success and F.

HOW HE GOT STARTED IN THE CATALOG BUSINESS: Burns began his career with another science cataloger, Science Kit. Working in its bid sales group, he handled all the contracts and line-item bids with schools and school districts. Much of the educational market buys its science products via the bid process, Burns notes. (Science Kit acquired Edmund Scientific in 2001, and both are independently operated divisions of VWR Corp.) Following a brief hiatus with an Internet firm, Burns returned to cataloging in 2004 to become the brand manager of Edmund Scientific. He’s been with VWR for 10 years. WHAT CHALLENGES HE FACED UPON HIS RETURN

The dream of many B-to-B catalog marketing entrepreneurs is to “cash out” someday. If that’s your dream, start planning at least five years in advance. First compile a list of what it is you think you have to sell. Be realistic, because if you’re not, the only people you’re hurting are yourself and your shareholders.
Your initial list might look something like this:
* solid three-plus year track record of sales and profitability growth;
* solid three-plus year growth in the 12-month buyer file with increasing one-, two- and three-year customer values;
* high, dependable margins;
* unique, hard-to-find products and services;
*

There’s postal, then there’s everything else. This is our everything else issue. Not quite everything, of course. This is our operations and fulfillment-themed issue. And considering that an overwhelming majority of catalog/multichannel merchants handle their own fulfillment according to our quarterly Catalog Success Latest Trends Report, which focuses on management issues, the buck stops here with fulfillment. In our special cover report, Kate Vitasek, who helps companies evaluate their operations, and call-center guru Liz Kislik provide advice on fulfillment-center benchmarking, performance metrics and call-center rep attentiveness. This issue offers plenty of the other everything else, too, including a multipoint plan on hiring interns, a

Catalog Success: Where’s the company headquartered? Tim Burns: Tonawanda, New York. CS: What’s the catalog’s demographic? TB: We’re about two-thirds male, 35 to 55 [years of age] and they’re typically a professional. So a teacher, engineer, lawyer, doctor. We index really high in terms of those professions. So that’s pretty much what it looks like. CS: What year was the first Edmund Scientific catalog published? TB: The company was founded in 1942 and the first catalog was mailed in 1948. CS: What’s the primary merchandise offered in the catalog? TB: Science-related products, gifts and toys. So innovative, educational and science-themed.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Could Charles Dickens have described the state of multichannel retailing any better over the past few years? Whether your business is doing well or could be doing better, whether you’re in a hiring or layoff mode, a sometimes overlooked, cost-effective strategy for recruiting and developing top talent — and a critical source for your workforce — is the hiring of interns. With so many computer- and tech-savvy young people out there, and technology and e-commerce playing such important roles in the future of the industry, some of the brightest, most talented

As per my headline, for this issue of Catalog Success: The Corner View, I hand my pen — um, keyboard — over to Catalog Success E-Commerce Insights columnist Alan Rimm-Kaufman. Alan heads the Rimm-Kaufman Group, an online agency providing large-scale paid search bid management and Web site testing services, and was formerly a marketing executive with the Crutchfield catalog of consumer electronics. I leave the stage to Alan, who starts with a potential scenario followed by nine predictions for the future of the catalog/multichannel business as it affects you. Scene: A bar at a conference hotel during a marketing trade show. Bill: