Brylane

Welcome to Retail Online Integration's third annual list of the best and brightest women in the cross-channel retail industry. The women highlighted on this list are marketing and merchandising professionals, e-commerce experts, and chief executive officers at cross-channel retail companies of all sizes. They've all helped to position their companies to succeed in today's fast-paced cross-channel retail environment.

After receiving such great feedback on our inaugural list last year, we here at Retail Online Integration decided to make this an annual feature to highlight the leading female executives in cross-channel retail. The women on this year’s list, as were those on last year’s, are the best and brightest in the cross-channel retail industry.…

BrylaneHome, a home and lifestyles brand in the portfolio of Redcats’ OneStopPlus.com division, announced today the launch of its first-ever Plus Size Living catalog. The catalog, scheduled to be in-home the week of September 20th, will feature affordably-priced, innovative products exclusively designed to add comfort and convenience to the overall lifestyle of the plus-size customer.

Lane Bryant: The women’s plus-size specialty apparel retailer has launched a new fashion retail catalog. The catalog was mailed to 3 million existing customers beginning in March. Lane Bryant, which isn’t connected with the former Lane Bryant catalog that Redcats USA (and before that, Brylane) used to operate, also unveiled a new toll-free number to handle orders and customer service inquiries, joining its retail stores and e-commerce site. The new catalog conveys a fashion-inspired look with a new attitude and bright colors.

If you own a catalog company and are looking to sell it, what’s the No. 1 thing you need to know about? Time’s up. It’s what the potential buyers are looking for in an acquisition, of course. So, just what are they looking for? During one of the first sessions of the Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants held May 19-22 in Kissimmee, Fla., “New Drivers of M&A Activity and What It Could Mean for You,” a panel of four bankers — David Solomon, co-CEO of Goldsmith Agio; Stuart Rose, managing director of Tully & Holland; Lee Helman, managing director of Financo; and

Why would Redcats USA, the parent company of the former Lane Bryant catalog, abandon such a recognizable name last November by changing it to Woman Within? Plain and simple: The company’s hand was forced. As part of its licensing agreement with Limited Brands, the former owner of the Lane Bryant company that sold the catalog division to Brylane (renamed Redcats several years ago), Brylane agreed to stop using the Lane Bryant name for its mail order catalog 15 years after the acquisition, which was last October. What You Can Learn After unsuccessfully trying to renegotiate the licensing agreement with the management of Charming

Well into the second decade of the Internet, many of you reading this — if not all of you — have a pretty good recollection of the “Wild Wild West” days of the Internet early on. It actually still is the Wild West, but in a much different way. And, having sat in on a number of sessions at the e-Tail conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, I noticed the breadth of knowledge that’s permeated the catalog/multichannel community and helped give it an entirely different character than it had 10 years ago. For one, consider how the language has changed. In the mid-’90s, I

EVP, Boston Apparel Group, © Profile of Success, Catalog Success magazine, June 2006 Interview by Matt Griffin Catalog Success: How many catalogs are in the Boston Apparel Group? Christophe Gaigneux: In the Boston Apparel Group we have four catalogs, we have Chadwick's, the Lerner catalog, or Metrostyle, because we're changing the name this year, and we have Jessica London. And all three of these are located in the Boston area. And we have La Redoute, which is a French brand that we also have in the U.S. CS: When was that group established? CG: As it is today? We just changed the setup a

The name Brylane traditionally has been synonymous with deliberate sales growth and budget-priced, conservative clothing primarily for middle-aged, large-sized women. But when the Paris-based Redcats, the home-shopping division of French company PPR, bought the multititle cataloger in 1998, it set out to apply a broader, more aggressive — call it “worldlier” — merchandising and marketing formula to Brylane. Fast forward seven years, and although the sales growth has yet to take off, notable transformations in the merchandising and marketing approach, corporate structure and company culture all have kicked in. Two of the New York-based company’s top executives — Chairman/CEO Eric Faintreny

Truly effective multichannel marketing is an ongoing challenge for most catalogers. Ultimately, you want to deliver consistent customer experiences across all your sales channels, right? Although there isn’t one formula for success, there are a growing number of multichannel commerce tools that can help you achieve that goal. One such tool is a virtual catalog, defined by Chicago-based the e-tailing group as an almost exact replica of your print catalog integrated by varying degrees into your Web site, as opposed to a simple menu of products. By using a virtual catalog, customers can experience the aesthetics of a print catalog as well as