J.C. Penney

Through countless catalog experiences, Ed Bjorncrantz’s passion for growth and the catalog business never has ebbed. How he got involved in cataloging: After attending Colgate University, C. Eduard Bjorncrantz was hired to run the catalog sales office for the Arlington, Va., Sears store. He later left the post to get his MBA at the University of Virginia, after which he went back to work for Sears in its Chicago offices in a product management program. Among other assignments, Bjorncrantz was appointed assistant catalog marketing manager for bedspreads and draperies — then the largest catalog division in the company. Following assignments in retail marketing and

Catalogers ad spend will increase to $1.3 billion in 2007, reflecting increasing Internet competition, according to estimates in a recent study on advertising ratios and budgets from market research firm Schonfeld & Associates. By comparison, online stores Amazon.com and eBay plan to increase ad spending this year by 11 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Other data revealed in the study: * Computer manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard, will increase ad spending by 5.3 percent. * Retail department stores, including such catalog mailers as J.C. Penney, will spend $4.3 billion in 2007, up 7.5 percent from 2005. * Variety stores, such as Target and Wal-mart, will

By Noelle Buoncristiano E-commerce continues to register strong growth metrics. Indeed, online holiday shoppers spent a record $18.5 billion this year, according to the eSpending Report from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings. This was a 35 percent increase over the $13.7 billion spent in 2002. Purchases made with Visa debit and credit cards registered a whopping $97.9 billion during the holiday season. And Visa reported that online purchases alone increased almost 50 percent, with a total dollar volume exceeding $7.6 billion. Shopping.com, an online comparison-shopping service, helped a record 76 million holiday shoppers, an 81 percent increase in traffic

By 2005, online sales are expected to become nearly one-third of a cataloger’s business, according to The Direct Marketing Association. To track the success of your online efforts, you need a way to measure the effectiveness of your Web site — and your efforts to get people to visit it. What’s more, your measurements should go beyond the typical Web-server log-file analyzers that offer only performance- and site-driven data such as the ambiguous number of hits, page views, user sessions and unique visitors. Today, more powerful tools are available to measure campaign success, customer experience, e-commerce activity and overall return on investment (ROI).

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

J.C. Penney has had a tangled fulfillment system for many years. The complexity of being a bricks and mortar and a catalog company created a fulfillment process enabling the company to provide exemplary product delivery, albeit through an elaborate system. But faced with multi-channel and multi-company sales expansion, even J.C. Penney recognized there had to be a better way. J.C. Penney has six strategically placed fulfillment facilities across the United States that decrease shipping time to its stores and its customers. Every warehouse is 2 million square feet, which combined have more than 35,000 picking stations. Each one is