Palm Beach Jewelry

A compilation of this year’s best and brightest ideas in our annual 50 Best Tips issue.

A fast-paced session titled 60 Ideas in 60 Minutes for Your Distribution Center at the National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment in Las Vegas, left attendees with a bevy of new strategies and solutions that they can implement in their businesses. Timothy Holody, COO/general manager of cross-channel retailer Seta/Palm Beach Jewelry, Lance Curran, warehouse director of online apparel retailer Threadless, dispensed the tips in rapid-fire format.

This week in the fourth and final part of our coverage of the recent All About ROI webinar, Good Data is Good Business!, sponsored by Stibo Systems, we conclude our recap of the presentation from Simon Rodrigue, associate vice president of e-commerce for Sears Canada. Specifically, we offer up steps four and five of Rodrigue's five critical steps to data integration.

This week in the third part of our coverage of the recent webinar from All About ROI, Good Data is Good Business!, sponsored by Stibo Systems, we continue our recap of the presentation from Simon Rodrigue, associate vice president of e-commerce for Sears Canada. Specifically, we offer up step three of Rodrigue's five critical steps to data integration. To access this webinar on-demand, click here.)

It's no secret these days that data is critical for marketers looking to optimize profits. What isn't so readily available is the best ways for retailers to collect and manage their data. In a webinar last week from All About ROI, Good Data is Good Business!, sponsored by Stibo Systems, two retailers — Timothy Holody, COO of Seta Corp., parent company of multichannel jewelry marketer PalmBeach Jewelry, and Simon Rodrigue, associate vice president of e-commerce for Sears Canada — discussed how their companies make the most of their data. (To access the webinar on-demand, click here.)

Different kinds of catalogers should have different customer service policies, according to Timothy Holody, COO of Seta Corp., which markets through the Palm Beach Jewelry catalog and ships 1.5 million to 2 million units of jewelry a year to customers. “But whatever your policies are, they have to be set up in such a way that you can measure their effectiveness, and their impact on your bottom line.” Holody’s presentation at the recent National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment in Schaumburg, Ill., was a case study, “A Real World Look at Customer Service Policies,” which focused on how Palm Beach Jewelry handles various customers

When evaluating your contact center staff, you’ll likely want to establish a performance standard, but what standard works best? In an NCOF session last week, Tim Holody, chief operating officer with jewelry cataloger Seta Corp. (Palm Beach Jewelry), made a case for catalogers to get away from old measurements of calls per hour in the call center. Instead, he suggested that call centers adopt a sales revenue per hour metric. “We’d probably like reps to take eight calls per hour,” he said. “Multiply that by (Seta’s average order of) $150, and we’d want reps to generate $1,250 in sales per hour.” On the other hand, Holody

Sitting in packed sessions at trade shows devoted to the discussion of affiliate marketing, one gets the sense that the catalogers in the room are either experts or novices in this growing channel. This special report is meant to serve both groups: It’ll explore what you should know before you start an affiliate program, as well as strategies to make your existing program better. Affiliate marketing is the process by which third parties, often Web sites, advocate your products or services in exchange for a commission. A commission is paid every time the affiliate sends a sale to you, or in exchange for

Problem: Seta Corp., a jewelry syndicator and the parent company of Palm Beach Jewelry catalog, continually looks to reduce labor fulfillment costs. Solution: Instituted employee incentive programs, improved automation, realigned scheduling and staffing, and streamlined distribution center operations. Result: Between 1999 and 2004, the cataloger reduced its labor fulfillment costs by 45 percent; at the same time, it increased employees’ average hourly wages. * The following functions are included in Seta’s labor fulfillment costs: receiving; quality control; stock putaway; picking/packing; shipping; engraving; returns processing and putaway; production maintenance; and all hourly and salaried payroll costs, including payroll taxes. If you’re of the