Haband

An 82-year-old direct marketing business that primarily serves value-conscious senior citizens, Haband Co. always must keep an eye on the old-fashioned ways of doing things to properly serve its clientele. For instance, a sizable portion of Haband customers still mail their order forms. These people also like to strike up friendly conversations with telephone reps. But for the past seven years, Haband, a loose-sheet cataloger of budget-priced clothing, food, gifts and home furnishings, has outsourced overseas a sizable portion of its call center. Haband Online President Jay Baney, who’s also Haband’s vice president of technical services, explained how Haband decided to rely on Cyber City’s

Sur La Table 163,680 56,295 191 $85 cookware Mokrynskidirect 12/06 9/05 Dog.com 139,829 51,031 174 $115 pet supplies List Locators 9/06 5/05 & Managers Knit Picks 73,502 27,347 169 $60 crafts Walter Karl 6/06 6/05 Cutter & Buck 70,938 30,555 132 $147 men’s apparel Mokrynskidirect 1/07 1/06 Kinsman Co. 27,090 12,695 113 $83 gardening supplies D-J Associates 12/06 9/05 Fannie May Confections 72,173 34,794 107 $36 candy, chocolates Millard Group 11/06 10/05 Leichtung Workshops 20,312 9,958 104 $52 woodworking tools Names & 9/06 7/05 Addresses Orion Telescopes 33,445 16,849 99 $175 telescopes Millard Group and Binoculars 7/06 7/05 Time for Me 141,411 71,958 97 $95 women’s apparel Mokrynskidirect 1/07 10/05 Siegel Display Products 33,569 17,474 92 $300 promotional display products Direct Media 10/06 10/05 Smith & Hawken 140,722 74,971 88 $125 gardening supplies Belardi/Ostroy ALC 11/06 10/05 Redding Medical 13,689 7,642 79 $95 nursing supplies Fasano and 12/06 8/05 Associates Penn Herb Co. Ltd. 26,459 14,837 78 $54 natural remedies Walter Karl 4/06 5/05 MidWest Edwin Watts Golf 328,416 185,448 77 $250 golf equipment Venture Direct 8/06 5/05 Worldwide Staples 3,843,101 2,183,681 76 $250 office products Direct Media 12/06 11/05 Sporty’s Men’s Collection 12,926 7,368 75.4 N/A men’s recreational products Millard Group 1/07 5/05 New England Business 1,114,626 636,766 75 $120 office products MeritDirect Service (NEBS) 12/06 9/05

Some in attendance at the recent New England Mail Order Association conference in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., were a little taken aback by the presence of Tom Haugen, an executive director with Li & Fung (Trading) Ltd., a $7.1 billion division of the global outsourcing giant Li & Fung Group. After all, this is a conference that’s historically been targeted primarily at small- to mid-size catalogers from the eastern U.S. But Haugen, whose firm represents such catalogers as Blair, Haband and Restoration Hardware, offered some eye-opening trends on product sourcing around the world that can ultimately affect even the smallest cataloger. For starters, he noted that