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Major industry events, such as last week’s DMA08 Annual Conference in Las Vegas, can’t help but give you a feel for the climate and direction this business is headed, particularly when you get the view from all around. So Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips columnist and catalog consultant Jim Coogan and Catalog Success Editor-in-Chief Paul Miller did just that, taking the temperature from every quarter during various stages of its five-day run. Here’s what they heard and how they saw it relating to you, the catalog/multichannel merchant. Coogan’s Take There were some bearish assessments voiced regarding the direction of the catalog industry at the

In a session during last week’s NEMOA conference in Portland, Maine, Lois Boyle, president/chief creative officer at catalog consulting firm J. Schmid & Assocs., said that the customer experience is the key factor in developing a successful catalog company. Stressing that in today’s world you’re more in competition with consumers’ time than with their pocketbooks, Boyle provided a few ways to help your catalog break through the clutter of everyday life. Included below are four of those tips: 1. Develop a schemata (customer’s frame of reference). Calling it the “curse of knowledge,” Boyle said that many catalogers know too much. “We get so close