Merchandising

IKEA, Sweden’s Jewel
August 1, 2002

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

Analyze Your Profit Contribution
August 1, 2002

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

Omaha Steaks: Focus on Fulfillment
May 1, 2002

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

Your Printer, Your Partner
May 1, 2002

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

Whatever Works: Where Product is King
April 1, 2002

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

Paper Buying 101
April 1, 2002

Buying paper is a topic that gets discussed frequently in any catalog operation. And since paper is such a large percentage of a catalog’s printing cost, the topic certainly requires frequent attention. Advantages: Buying Paper Price: It’s often thought that buying paper directly from the mill or through a broker presents an opportunity for price per 100 wt. savings, especially if purchased in large quantities. It’s assumed that if you buy the paper yourself, you can avoid a markup or administrative fee that the printer adds when it purchases the paper for you. However, these savings often are hard to realize. When you

Title Nine Sports Shares Their Strategies
March 1, 2002

At a Glance Catalog: Title Nine Sports Headquarters: Emeryville, CA Merchandise: Women’s fitness wear Company founded: 1989 Best-selling items: sports bras account for 30 percent of sales Target demographic: 30- to 50-year-old women who work outside of the home and participate in sports or fitness. Title Nine Sports uses sports photographers to capture real-life models—career women who happen to love sports and fitness—showcasing merchandise. Named after the landmark federal legislation that prohibits gender discrimination in schools and their sports programs, the Title Nine Sports catalog markets high-quality women’s fitness wear in a refreshingly casual and authentic manner. From the use of

Stock Tips
March 1, 2002

It turns out you can judge a book by its cover—if it’s a catalog. Even small books must make big first impressions. “You need to get [customers] to open your book, and you’ve got about three seconds to do it,” says John Rossiter, a senior sales representative from printing company R.R. Donnelley and Sons. And while design and copy undoubtedly play larger roles in grabbing customers’ and prospects’ attention, without the right paper stock a catalog cover may go unnoticed or misrepresent your brand. Following is a rundown of what to examine when selecting a cover stock. Brand and Basis Weight Many consultants and

One-Stop E-commerce: GiftCatalog.com
December 1, 2001

Type the word “Gift” into any Internet search engine, and you’ll be faced with more sites than you know what to do with. From Gift.com to SendAGift.com, online gift retailing has become a hot-button business. With such a crowded field, why would the executives of retail giant Target Corp. decide that three of its strongest print catalog brands—Wireless, Signals and Seasons—would do better under one URL, GiftCatalog.com? The answer lies in the shopping experience. Market researchers told Target’s online division, target.direct, that potential for cross-selling among the three catalogs was high, but that navigating three different sites was not as easy it should be.

Gifts from the Florida Sunshine
November 1, 2001

One night in 1950, a truckload of grapefruit was late in arriving at Ed Cushman’s tiny fruit packing business in West Palm Beach, FL. Cushman was there supervising as the grower’s truck was being unloaded. As the last 20 bushels came off the truck, Cushman asked the workers, “What the devil is this? These aren’t grapefruit!” Said the driver, “I don’t know. I just deliver what they give me.” Turns out this particular grower had a few trees of Mineola tangelos, and they almost looked like orange bells. “My dad came up with the name ‘HoneyBell’,” says Allen Cushman, now president of