Lane Bryant

After a year of sales and profit declines, plus-size-apparel retailer Charming Shoppes Inc. said yesterday that it would turn to American Idol to draw customers to its Lane Bryant clothing shops. The Bensalem-based company, whose 2,121 stores also include Fashion Bug and Catherines outlets, said it planned to spend $4 million on Lane Bryant ads during the nationally televised talent competition in the coming weeks.

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.

Below is the first in a quarterly series of charts featuring purchase data compiled from Abacus Consumer Co-op members. Abacus is making this data available exclusively to Catalog Success. The first one contains data from Sept. 1, 2006, through Aug. 31, 2008. This analysis is limited to co-op members who were active through the entire time frame and includes only catalog, online and retail transactions. Consumer sales growth was solid for the first two months of 2008, before falling off at the end of the first quarter, according to a subset of Abacus Consumer Cooperative members with catalog, online or retail transactions from Sept.

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

Dear Editor, RE: “DMA Drops MPS Fee” that ran in February's IndustryEye, the Direct Marketing Association took the right step by eliminating the $1 sign-up fee, but its Mail Preference Service (MPS) still requires a credit card number to ensure authenticity. There are more than 4 million names on the MPS suppression file, but DMA hasn’t done much to promote MPS to consumers and its membership base. More importantly, the DMA hasn’t made it easy for consumers to have their names added to the do-not-mail list. Catalog Choice’s goal — to stop unwanted mail to help clean our environment — is a worthy one.

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

Quebecor to Shutter Two Catalog Printing Plants Catalog printer Quebecor World announced in November it would close two catalog printing facilities in 2007. The closures are part of an overall restructuring plan and will eliminate about 400 jobs next year. The company will shut down a printing facility in Elk Grove Village, Ill., and a bindery facility in Bensenville, Ill., during the first quarter. Quebecor expects to create 75 positions at its other facilities to accommodate additional volume. As part of the restructuring, the printer will invest in new press and bindery equipment. People on the Move The Sharper Image: Jerry Levin

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

In 21 years at Newport News, Geralynn Madonna has become the chief ambassador for this fashion-forward catalog brand. Having studied fashion at F.I.T. in New York before making her way into the catalog industry at Lane Bryant, Madonna moved in 1981 to Newport News’ predecessor, Avon Fashions. Starting as an assistant buyer in the swimwear department, she was quickly promoted through the ranks, first to buyer, and then on to director, vice president of merchandising and executive vice president before landing in her current post. Madonna has seen the catalog through a series of changes, including a leveraged buyout in 1987 and the

Although no one seems to know all the details, the first mail order company for women’s “plus” sizes was apparently started about 75 years ago by a woman named Lena Bryant, as an outgrowth of her successful retail operation. Not Lane Bryant—Lena Bryant. That’s right, Lena. The name that has become synonymous with apparel for large women was apparently the result of a signmaker’s error. Rumor has it that Lena liked how “Lane Bryant” looked on the storefront and stuck with that name for her company. There are other interesting legends about the early days of the industry. For example, Lena Bryant’s initial mail