January 2006 Issue
A Chat With Paal Gisholt, President/CEO, SmartPak Equine
© Profile of Success, Catalog Success magazine, January 2006 Catalog Success: When was the catalog established? Paal Gisholt: The catalog was established in April of 2002. Prior to that, we were a dot-com company that started in June of 2000. CS: How do you describe your primary merchandise? PG: We have a core product offering, which is custom-packed equine nutritional supplements in daily-dose packs. We’ve used that as a platform from which we sell all different types of products that are useful to people who ride horses. Those are things like horse clothing, barn and stable equipment, rider gear, pharmaceuticals for horses, etc. And
B-to-B Goes 'Plug and Play'
By Alicia Orr Suman Cataloger/manufacturer United Receptacle supports its distribution sales network by creating and producing ready-to-use catalog layouts. You're flipping through a 500-page catalog for a major player in the janitorial and sanitation (jan/san) supplies market sector when you happen upon a section displaying waste containers. The catalog carries a host of well-known brands — including wastebaskets, can liners and other products made by United Receptacle. What you may not realize is that the other company's catalog that you're viewing actually features page layouts, photos and graphic designs produced not by that catalog, but by manufacturer and distributor United Receptacle. In
B-to-B Goes ‘Plug and Play’
You’re flipping through a 500-page catalog for a major player in the janitorial and sanitation (jan/san) supplies market sector when you happen upon a section displaying waste containers. The catalog carries a host of well-known brands — including wastebaskets, can liners and other products made by United Receptacle. What you may not realize is that the other company’s catalog that you’re viewing actually features page layouts, photos and graphic designs produced not by that catalog, but by manufacturer and distributor United Receptacle. In addition to producing its own catalog each year to showcase its full product line, United Receptacle also helps many of
Contributions to Profit: Track Call-to-Order Conversions
Readers: With this issue we welcome new columnist Jim Gilbert, a catalog and DM consultant and a professor of direct marketing. In this column, which we’ll publish 10 times this year, Mr. Gilbert will offer practical strategies that can help you boost sales and profitability. —Editors Any time a customer communicates with your company — that is, interacts with you via one of your customer touchpoints — you have an opportunity to increase sales and goodwill. Unfortunately in some cases, it’s also an opportunity to lose sales and goodwill. I can’t stress this enough: You must analyze and consistently monitor all of your customer
Cool Ideas
In a world of cynics it’s easy to focus purely on what needs fixing or what’s just plain silly. Yet no doubt you agree that it can be refreshing and heartening to concentrate on the positive things one sees in daily life. Here are a few I encountered in the past few weeks: Gift cards for various merchants sold in supermarkets. A display at my local Super Fresh included gift cards for companies such as Bed Bath & Beyond and The Home Depot. Talk about convenient holiday gift shopping for consumers and an added distribution channel for merchants. To whomever thought of that idea,
Don't Try This at the Office
By Gina Valentino Five ways to sabotage your single-product, direct mail campaign. Smart marketers, sales teams and business owners recognize the opportunity to develop a direct mail piece that exclusively promotes a single product — an item with a strong margin and an identifiable target audience. Usually the item has a high price point and specific benefits for the buyer — as well as a surplus of information that necessitates more space than a catalog page realistically can accommodate. If identifying the opportunity is that easy, how quickly do you become a victim of either yours or a colleague's best intentions? If
Don’t Try This at the Office
Smart marketers, sales teams and business owners recognize the opportunity to develop a direct mail piece that exclusively promotes a single product — an item with a strong margin and an identifiable target audience. Usually the item has a high price point and specific benefits for the buyer — as well as a surplus of information that necessitates more space than a catalog page realistically can accommodate. If identifying the opportunity is that easy, how quickly do you become a victim of either yours or a colleague’s best intentions? If you’re unsure, here are mistakes to avoid when implementing a single-product mailing.
Edwin Watts Golf Could Drive Home More Sales
Positioning itself as “Golf’s most trusted retailers since 1968,” Edwin Watts Golf obviously is an established player in its industry, selling golf equipment through catalog, Internet and retail stores. Click here to read Christine Carrington’s creative review of Edwin Watts Golf catalog (PDF).
How to Hook and Keep Gold Customers
The adage, “80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers,” is as true today as when it was coined many years ago. The real questions are how to identify those prospects and one- and two-time buyers who may have a strong affinity for your merchandise, and then how do you keep them buying? That is, how to turn prospects and one-time buyers into gold customers. Following are some strategies to test, roll out and then measure. If They Look Like Customers … Tactics such as calculating average order value (AOV) and/or lifetime value (LTV); modeling; and segmenting buyers
Strategy: Exit the Stage Right
Selling a catalog business can be an emotional decision. Owners often have an inflated view of what their businesses are worth. So arriving at a realistic price tag can be difficult. The old adage “For every seller there’s a buyer” certainly holds true. But finding the right buyer for your business — someone willing to pay your asking price — isn’t always easy. While we at Lett Direct aren’t investment bankers or business brokers, I’ll share with you what we’ve learned during the years from working with catalog business owners wanting to sell their companies. Timing is Everything Knowing when to sell
What’s New in Packaging Solutions
With Americans spending as much as $26 billion on holiday gifts online in the past two months, an increase of 18 percent from 2004, according to Jupiter Research, chances are good you’ve just shipped a record number of packages. As you begin to assess how well you weathered the holiday rush, consider how your customers received your products. Did all your packages arrive in one piece? How many returns were due to damaged merchandise? Following are new products and services that can help keep your packages safe and your fulfillment center in top form. Foam Packaging Delivered at Room Temperature Instapak
