Eddie Bauer

Eddie Bauer opened its first retail store, Eddie Bauer’s Sport Shop, in Seattle in 1920. Just two years after the founding, the company established its creed: “To give you outstanding quality, value, service and a guarantee that we may be worthy of your high esteem.” To this day, the promise manifests throughout the organization, including production and manufacturing. The Eddie Bauer conglomeration consists of eddiebauer.com, eddiebauerhome.com, eddiebaueroutlet.com, a network of almost 600 retail stores (based in the United States, Canada, Germany and Japan) and a highly successful catalog division. During the course of the company’s more than 80-year history, it has celebrated

Choosing a print location for your international catalog requires more than throwing a dart at a world map while blindfolded. When marketing overseas, should you print and mail your catalog in the United States or in your target country? An economical solution is based on production, distribution and your marketing strategy, according to Tim Ohnmacht, manager of international business development for printing company Quad/Graphics. Your marketing strategy and mail volume largely dictate your printing and mailing location. For example, if you’re banking on the cache of being an American company, consider printing your catalog in the States and mailing your piece using the

It began on the Lands’ End Web site as a high-tech variant of paper dolls. Now, 3-D models are a popular feature of many online catalogs, including J.C. Penney, Eddie Bauer and The Sharper Image. The 3-D model enables shoppers to configure an electronic, rotating mannequin that resembles themselves. Everything from face shape to waist measurement to hairstyle is changeable. The model is designed to help consumers make apparel decisions by showing how a garment fits, falls and flatters. It also shows how a garment will work with particular hair and eye colors. Most of the sites with online models offer a complementary

When Peter and Peggy Rice founded the Plow & Hearth catalog in an outbuilding on their Virginia farm in 1981, their inspiration was the back-to-basics movement. Nearly 20 years later, the country philosophy remains, but the back-roads mail order business is anything but backwards. Its adoption of a high-tech database in the mid '90s has led to quick, efficient growth through sophisticated modeling, which in turn engendered a home-furnishings catalog spin-off and a highly successful upselling program. Now Plow & Hearth's dual commitment to direct marketing basics and use of cutting-edge technology is allowing the founders to reap what they've sown. In April

by Jack Schmid THE BIG IDEA! What direct marketer has not dreamed of coming up with that totally unique, breakthrough concept like the "Johnson Box" or the negative option club or another creative ploy that gives one immortality in industry recognition. Whether you're a designer, photographer, writer, printer or order form manufacturer, everyone is seeking that special creative technique that will help their work stand out, differentiate themselves from the competition and get better results. "Beat the Control!" is the cry of creative professionals. Let's look at a number of ways that successful catalogers are thinking "outside the box" in their creative efforts.

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