Management

As catalog companies grow and their business strategies change, having an effective organizational structure can help executives improve results. Of course, the size and complexity of a business will determine how many people are needed to make any structure work. This month, we’ll examine typical organizational structures for catalogs of all sizes and how effective hierarchies can be established. Structures and Teams In a large corporation that has other business units, the front end of a catalog operation—marketing, merchandising and creative—generally reports to a catalog director or vice president. In a more typical catalog operation, they report to a president and/or CEO.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it. —Yogi Berra This is the extraordinary story of a family-owned corporation that bailed out of its half-century-old signature business and took off in a whole new and highly profitable direction. In 1942, an avid young amateur photographer named Norman W. Edmund tried to locate good camera lenses. But the war had thrown a wrench into the entire stream of consumer and industrial products. After an exhaustive search, he found a source for his lenses. It occurred to him that other camera buffs may be in the same boat, so the

Sale, merger, IPO? It’s important to know, from the very inception of your business, how you will exit from it. The end game is a fascinating concept. It is philosophically universal, therefore having definition and meaning relative to life and living, religion, art, war, sports, investments—and ownership of a catalog business. When one thinks of the term “end game,” the two words “end” and “game” should be considered. First, it’s the end of a process, often the sale of a business or the harvest of wealth after a long period of creating and increasing value. Second, it’s a game, that is, a

My old professor, Frank Knight, used to say, that what people wanted was not the satisfaction of their wants, but better wants. —Herbert Stein, Presidential advisor and economist, The Wall Street Journal When I was a small boy growing up on Long Island, the big annual December outing was an overnight trip to Manhattan to visit my grandmother for the movie and Christmas pageant at the Radio City Music Hall and the annual visit to F.A.O. Schwarz, the great toy emporium on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street to see the newest in 0-gauge Lionel electric trains. When I became a man, I put away

Just before I sat down to write this, The New York Times reported the death of yet another beloved—albeit little known—boutique institution, Gorsart Clothes. The downtown Manhattan men’s clothier had served the Wall Street community since 1921. In the words of Times writer Sherri Day, The last straw may have been the advent of casual Fridays—and Thursdays and Wednesdays—which eliminated much of the need for the crisply tailored suit and the power tie. Where Gorsart was unable to change with the times, another great New York men’s clothier, Barney’s, changed too much—only to be taken over by its creditors in 1996. Founded in

For the past two decades, I have written and spoken worldwide on the future of the catalog industry. My position has always been to challenge conventional thinking, and I have been right on some things and wrong on others, but hopefully always provocative. My early thoughts on the future of the Internet (1994) and its influence on catalog and direct marketing have been, for the most part, accurate. I predicted the growing importance of e-mail marketing, permission-based databases, proprietary databases and the surety of dynamic pricing as an outgrowth of self-directed, online commerce. In 1997, I was correct in my assessment of

There’s nothing like having a billionaire for a neighbor. Especially one that throws a little business your way, like Microsoft did when it named Multiple Zones International (MZI) its chief supplier of computer hardware, software and services. The contract is one of many changes taking place at MZI. Since moving online in 1995, MZI has seen fast growth in revenue and transactions, creating a $115-million company. What began in 1989 as a three-title catalog company with PC Zone, Mac Zone and The Learning Zone, has grown into a multi-channel retail operation that includes a new business-to-business division. The new Zones Business Solutions division is

The longer you’ve been in cataloging, the more variations you will have heard for this month’s rule of thumb. Over the years I’ve heard two years and $2 million, four years and $4 million, even five years and $5 million—but all variations seem to agree that it takes several years and about the same number of millions of dollars for a new catalog to reach breakeven. How reliable is this rule? Are there exceptions? Or has launching a successful catalog truly become a millionaire’s game these days? We’ll find some answers in this column, beginning with a precise definition of our rule: The

As senior vice president of marketing and strategic planning for West Marine, Michelle Farabaugh is one fast moving target. Her day begins with a 40-minute a.m. commute, during which she returns a entire voice mailbox of calls. In charge of creating and executing sales and marketing strategies for the Watson, CA-based company’s online, catalog, retail and wholesale sales channels, she typically works a 12-hour day, not including her morning drive. Farabaugh’s mission is to create new programs that drive profits and increase customer loyalty. As a young senior vice president, she subscribes to the motto that to succeed, you need “wrinkles or results.” Having