Merchandising

The end of summer and the return of college students is a welcome sight for marketers. Students and families are expected to spend $47.3 billion in back-to-college purchases this year, according to a recent National Retail Federation’s 2007 consumer intentions survey, conducted by BIGresearch. Here are some of its findings: * Students and parents are expected to spend a combined average of $956.93 on back-to-college merchandise, up from last year’s average of $880.52; * Spending on textbooks will exceed $15 billion; * Spending on clothing and accessories is expected to jump to $7.41 billion, up from last year’s $5.78 billion; * Students and

Summer’s almost gone; the holiday season’s creeping up. So besides making sure that shoppers find your site among the tens of thousands of retail sites available to them on the Web, what else can you do to ensure you’re ready when shoppers start searching for holiday gifts? Here are some helpful tips: 1. Figure out what works best for your business. For example, are your shoppers enticed by free shipping offers, or do you need to ship gratis just to be competitive? Do you sell the kinds of items that people tend to give loved ones perennially — namely sweaters, slippers, men’s shirts

With the Internet transforming even the smallest catalogers into worldwide marketing companies, virtually every business at some time or another will be forced to handle international orders. While the process certainly is more elaborate than it is for domestic shipments, it’s not rocket science: Do your homework, avoid unexpected costs. “Today, it’s relatively easy to market and ship overseas,” says Richard Miller, managing partner at North Chatham, Mass.-based Market Response International, an international direct marketing consulting and research firm, and also executive director of the International Mailers’ Advisory Group. Mailers’ ability to communicate quickly with customers, acknowledge receipt of orders and address problems “has become

We may be quite far removed from the, “We all wanna change the world” 1960s, but a group of former Lands’ End executives and employees last year did set out to change the world — the world of multichannel apparel sourcing. A year since its formal launch, Fair Indigo, a marketer of casual apparel, has stuck to its passion of complying with the rules of fair trade in apparel manufacturing. Headed by former Lands’ End senior vice president of international and e-commerce, Bill Bass, the Middleton, Wis.-based cataloger/multichannel merchant’s raison d’être is to only use apparel manufacturers that pay more than the

Out-of-stocks are becoming a greater problem in online shopping, according to a May 2007 survey performed by the e-tailing group and BetweenMarkets, The Online Inventory Impact Survey discovered out-of-stock products significantly affect consumers’ behavior online. More than 950 adults (61 percent female) who shop online four or more times a year and spend more than $500 annually were surveyed. Below are the survey’s findings. * 51 percent find products out of stock 25 percent of the time or more; * 62 percent found that clicking on promotional e-mail led to out-of-stock products “once in a while” to “always”; * 48 percent have received

As has been its annual custom, B-to-B list firm MeritDirect’s annual co-op event in White Plains, N.Y. on July 12 was kicked off by a provocative and entertaining presentation by catalog veteran and futurist Don Libey. Having heard Don speak plenty of times in the past (and despite his frequent speaking appearances, rarely does he repeat a single concept, strategy or idea), I’ve long since learned how to filter through his motivational pep talk and the meat of what he delivers. While always entertaining, his shtick is always chockfull of meat, but it often looks beyond tomorrow. And after all, we all want to

I find it surprising how much time and energy gets spent these days on the smallest details of a myriad of marketing communication activities while how little time and attention gets placed on effective product development. At our core, catalogers are merchants live and die by our ability to bring new, exclusive (or at least hard to find) products to the pages of catalogs.
Yet, how much real time, effort and resources is your catalog team allocating to this effort? Here are some guidelines that I highly recommend to you.
1. Challenge your product team to deliver 25 percent-plus of annual sales from

“A couple of years ago,” recalled Ken Harris, CEO of Carson, Calif.-based food gifts cataloger Mrs. Beasley’s, “Mrs. Beasley’s was in the toilet.” But like a rundown West Hollywood apartment overhauled to become a posh and highly sought-after condo, the $17 million Mrs. Beasley’s has undergone a dramatic overhaul over the past couple of years and has turned an 8 percent sales decline into a 25 percent increase. In a session at last week’s ACCM conference in Boston, Harris and two consultants he worked with explained how. The 29-year-old company, which has historically served many Hollywood celebrities and studios (its first-ever customer was Barbra Streisand,

During a session I led at the ACCM conference last week in Boston on how smaller catalogers can compete with the “big guys,” Terry Powers and Mark Mackaman of ComputerGear, a 15-year-old cataloger of computer-related t-shirts, gifts and accessories, said their key to success is “unique product, unique product, unique product.” They emphasized the importance of protecting those products via copyrights, trademarks and patents. The ComputerGear executives also stressed developing efficient operations. They cross-train CSRs to pull, pack and ship, and they make many of their own products, subcontracting manufacturing that they can’t handle efficiently in-house. They also recommended testing at least one thing —

This is my 21st go-round attending ACCM, the Annual Conference for Catalog and Multichannel Merchants (did I get that whole thing right?), being held May 21-23 in Boston. For my first 18, I was part of the assorted parent companies that co-sponsored the event with the DMA. But for the past two, as a press attendee and not a part-host, I’ve picked up a different perspective on this event as well as on some other conferences. Actually, I take that back: This year, I’m sort of a part-host again on the other side of the partnership since I was recently named chairman/editor of the