Children's Wear Digest

In light of the forthcoming postal rate increase, some catalogers, such as children’s apparel merchant Children’s Wear Digest, are cutting catalog circulation and adding Web-exclusive promotions. This enables them to better serve an increasingly multichannel customer base. Tracy Schneider, vice president of marketing and operations for the Richmond, Va.-based cataloger, explains the rationale behind this decision, as well as a new promotion that shows promise for the company. Catalog Success: What’s your take on the catalog marketing economic climate? Tracy Schneider: We’re seeing in our business that the catalog is beginning to take a back seat to the Web site. If we’re just looking at print

Jim Klaus, president of Children’s Wear Digest, sees his company as a unique hybrid of the big and small business models. Initially conceived in 1987 as a companion to his father’s retail business, the catalog has since grown to a circulation of 15 million. His father, Philip Klaus, sold the business in 1992 to The Right Start in order to allow it to grow. In 1995, the elder Klaus bought back the now larger and healthier business, and Jim was appointed president. He discussed with Matt Griffin, associate editor, the difficulties encountered during that transition and the challenges he currently faces. Catalog Success:

Problem: Children’s Wear Digest (CWD) couldn’t easily segment its e-mail lists, so tracking campaign results was difficult. Solution: Employ EMart, a Web-based e-mail campaign management system that’s easier to set up and use, and can more easily track results. Results: CWD’s e-mail open rates have doubled since implementing EMart, and clickthroughs increased from 12 percent to 34 percent. Children’s Wear Digest (CWD), a family-owned direct marketer and retailer of brand-name kids’ apparel, wanted to boost its e-mail marketing results. In particular, officials of the Richmond, VA-based company wanted to make segment-specific offers, thereby possibly improving their open rates and clickthroughs. But their previous

by Alicia Orr No one likes to receive telemarketing sales calls. The calls are almost always intrusive, and even those of us "in the business" rarely say "yes" to what's offered through an unsolicited phone call. The catalog industry, however, is in a unique and powerful position—we represent companies on the receiving end of thousands of calls a day from customers who: a) want to talk to us; b) are in the market for what we sell; and c) want to order our products now. Consider the upsell tactics two catalogs recently tried on me when I called to place an order. One successfully

by Jack Schmid and Lois Boyle Everyone who has spent any time producing catalogs knows that the process is truly a blend of right brain and left brain activity. In other words, there is almost no aspect of direct marketing that combines creative (the right brain side) and the analytical and numbers (the left brain side) quite like cataloging. Getting creative-types, writers, designers, photographers and even color separators and printers to understand the left brain aspects of cataloging is a definite stretch. This is not to say that the number crunchers are much better at being well versed on what makes brilliant catalog