Merchandising

The most successful catalog merchants have learned to focus their merchandise concept and offerings. Even a general merchandise cataloger that sells products in several major categories learns there must be a focus to what it sells (e.g., value, credit, lifestyle). Consumers have a “mental filing cabinet” in which they store retail and catalog brand names. They organize the information by subject (e.g., type of product, type of store), not by company name. So customers must be able to put a label on your catalog to know where to “file” it. If they can’t determine that, or if they don’t have affinity

Even the best merchants sometimes over-buy or miscalculate sales projections. And sometimes your returns ratio creeps a bit higher than normal. What’s a cataloger to do? Dump the stuff. Surplus goods have no value to your catalog until they’re converted into cash and those funds are reinvested. In addition, the overstocked items are taking up precious real estate in your warehouse, and you must pay to insure and maintain them. Finally, surplus assets depreciate in value more quickly than other assets as they become obsolete. Following are some ways to discard inventory and clear your shelves for tomorrow’s new goods. Discount to Move 1.

In a comfortable corner of Omaha, NE, designers, woodworkers and seamstresses create more than 600 new home decor and giftware products each year. Founded by Pamela Watanabe-Gerdes in 1987, Tender Heart Treasures considers its in-house design staff one of the company’s strongest competitive advantages and a major reason for its success. Today, the company produces two catalogs: Tender Heart Treasures, which offers country-style giftware and home accents, and A Special Place, which features more romantic, European-inspired gifts and home decor items. In addition to its catalogs, the company markets its products to wholesale customers through trade shows and two showrooms. Started with just

Good circulation planning and merchandising are the keys to success for a catalog company. Knowing how many books to circulate can be determined by calculating a catalog break-even point. But determining the number of pages your catalogs should include can be more difficult and somewhat more arbitrary. This month, I’ll look at basic criteria that can help determine the best page counts for your catalogs. I’ll also review the economics of adding pages to a book. Pages increase response, and the economics generally are favorable, provided there’s enough good merchandise available to support additional square inches of selling space. The decision to

The most unlucky cataloger I ever knew was a food cataloger who watched helplessly in 1994 as its retail store in Northridge, CA, turned to rubble in a disastrous earthquake. A year later, the same cataloger was again forced to watch as its retail store in Japan literally slid into the ocean in the Kyoto earthquake. Next time you think the gods have singled out your catalog for special torment, remember this cataloger. Cataloging has seen its share of recent collapses and closures (e.g., Fingerhut, Springhill Nursery, Willis & Geiger, Balduccis). Several others have come right to the brink of disaster before

Focus On: Merchandising & Creative The year was 1943. World War II was raging across Europe. Norway was occupied by Germany. The Nazis needed access to open ocean and the deep-water fjords to shelter their great ships. Next door, Sweden remained neutral and relatively untouched by the conflict. In the town of Elmtaryd, Sweden, in the parish of Agunnaryd, an ambitious 17-year-old boy named Ingvar Kamprad traveled from farm to farm selling seeds from a box on the back of his bicycle. He had other items to sell—fountain pens, pencils and matches—but couldn’t inventory them all on a bicycle. So he hit on

Trying to maximize profit contribution can conflict with trying to grow your business. In other words, do you want profit or growth? Of course, you want both. Unfortunately, one of these goals comes at the expense of the other. Maintaining a balance of mailings to your customer file (where the profits come from) versus mailing to prospects is critical to your bottom line. How do you evaluate contribution from mailings to the housefile and catalogs you circulate to prospects? This month, I’ll discuss the incremental break-even point compared to a fully absorbed break-even point as they relate to contribution to profit

The relationship you have with your printer can be crucial to your success. After all, your printer may be your largest unsecured vendor. Today’s printers do more than just put ink on paper. They ink-jet addresses and efficiently distribute catalogs through the mail stream across the country, often for the lowest possible costs. When choosing a printer, price certainly is important. No cataloger should pay a large premium for the privilege of dealing with a particular printing company. Other factors, such as service, lead times and technology, should be considered. Following are suggestions to think about the next time you get

On the surface, it’s a typical American success story: an immigrant family fleeing religious persecution arrives in the United States and starts a business; 85 years later it’s not only successful, but still family-owned and operated. Today Omaha Steaks is a meat dynasty, making the merchandising and fulfillment challenges it faced from the beginning uniquely significant. How it continues to survive those challenges highlights strategies for other catalogers hoping to conquer the perishables market. On-site Processing Omaha Steaks enjoys the advantage of processing most of its own product offerings. The company sources its—literally—raw material mainly from Midwestern producers, and then ages, trims and

John Peterman ran some ads for a cowboy duster and built the $70 million J. Peterman catalog business. Mel and Patricia Zeigler discovered a cache of surplus French army shirts, ran small ads and parlayed them into Banana Republic. Ditto Lillian Vernon with personalized women’s belts and handbags. For Larry Brown, it was … uh … a toe-straightener for six-toed feet. Really. Brown, 55, started out as a rookie in the Great Old Days of mail order, and has a repertoire of wild and colorful stories to prove it. He says he never chose the mail order business. The mail order business