See Page 32 to Order an Ideal Life
In December, catalogs are the mail carrier’s bane, as slippery as fish, too thick and numerous for any box or slot. They lie on our porches, against our doorways in drifts like winter leaves. We bring them into our homes, set them aside, then reach for one or the other as we sip our morning coffee, or balance them against our knees at night in the half-hour before sleep.
In some we seek the rooms we wish were our own: homes perfectly arranged with leather smoking chairs, velvet drapes and wrought-iron fire guards, all indirectly lit and uncluttered. In others we find the people we should have been, might be still: clear-skinned and graceful, huddled in laughing, polar-fleeced groups around hot chocolate and a snowman, or draped in polished amethyst, slate jersey matte and clever conversation.
In all of them we find windows onto the lives that could be ours, well-ordered lives full of gleaming white bathrooms, cunning wooden toys and perfectly appointed pillows. Smart, well-mannered children; a longer waist and slimmer hips; a home of effortless organization and comfort all seem possible for the price of a braided rug or a forest green field coat.
The lure is great as holidays loom, when wishes have not yet given way to resolutions. Day after day after day the catalogs appear, like insistent invitations to an alternative universe. They seem to know us, how we live and what we most desire. It’s almost magic.
But magic is often alchemy, and alchemy is mostly science, with a bit of mathematics thrown in. And so it is in the catalog industry.
Last year, about 10,000 companies produced more than 14,000 catalogs, which sold more than $110 billion worth of merchandise; analysts with the Direct Marketing Assn. say that will increase by $10 billion for this year. At last count, 1998, the U.S. Postal Service estimated that almost 15 billion catalogs were mailed to American consumers and businesses. That number has, by all estimates, increased sizably since then, mainly due to the Internet.
What for a few moments seemed like that threat to catalog companies quickly became a boon: Online retailers who didn’t augment their Web sites with a catalog went under, and old-time catalogers found a new market; 97% are now also online.
As a result, circulation of catalogs increased 70% in 2000, and sales rose 20%, outstripping the 8% increase of overall retail sales.
And none of that happened by magic.
For every catalog you leaf through, hundreds of people have spent thousands of hours trying to figure out who you are, what you want, what will make you move beyond desire into purchase. Where once catalogs simply displayed merchandise, now they tell stories, invent lifestyles, offer entertainment, use image and color and words to make the customer part of a world where people trim Christmas trees with cashmere scarves, where every dining room chair is splendidly slipcovered.
“We live in a commodity culture, and catalogs have become our arch-narrative, replacing storytelling and even myth,” said Richard Hooker, a director of the West Hollywood marketing firm Rothstein & Memsic. “We define who we are by what we have, and catalogs create the possibility of who you can be.”
“It’s a science,” said Sherry Chiger, editorial director of the industry magazine Catalog Age. “Eye-flow studies, square-inch analyses, cover test groups and complicated mailing-list formulas; in a successful catalog, nothing is accidental.”
“We can go into a database and find out not only who is a gardener, but we can differentiate between a Smith & Hawken gardener and a Gardener’s Eden gardener,” said John Lenser, president of Lenser, a direct-marketing consulting company in San Rafael. “People are getting more catalogs than ever, so you have to know your customers, which is difficult. As privacy becomes more important, it becomes harder to give them what they want.”
If such observations seem a bit coldblooded from an industry that gave us the cozy iconic image of tykes in red-plaid flannel poring over the big Sears catalog, well, that’s been gone these eight years. There are still a few general merchandise catalogs--JC Penney’s was named the No. 1 consumer catalog by Catalog Age this year--but in the last 20 years, the specialty stores that felled the American department store have also gone the postal route, and competition is fierce. From Williams-Sonoma to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from Lillian Vernon to Frank Lloyd Wright, from Martha Stewart to Home Depot, everyone has a catalog.
Meanwhile, pioneers of specialty direct order have broadened their mandates: L.L. Bean tromped past duck boots into housewares; Land’s End has moved beyond barometers and nautical gear into evening wear; and everyone but Harry & David has developed a special children’s line. And every purchase you make goes into a database, resulting not just in more catalogs, but in more catalogs targeted specifically to you.
As you sift through the 17 catalogs you got today, you’re seeing a reflection of how this country has changed in the last 30 years. For decades, most catalogs were either the “big books” from large department stores or featured very specialized products--L.L. Bean began as a hunting boot purveyor; Harry & David moved pears and apples.
“Mail-order for the most part was very downscale,” said Chiger. “It originated for people living in rural areas. And people who lived on farms weren’t looking for fancy, high-end merchandise.”
It wasn’t until 1971, when Roger Horchow launched “The Kenton Collection” (eventually purchased by Neiman Marcus) that retailers realized some consumers would order high-end stuff through the mail. As credit cards became more commonplace, so did catalog orders. By the early ‘80s, Chiger said, there was a flurry of new titles, including J. Crew, Hold Everything and Hanna Andersson. By the 1990s, many Americans, especially those in two-career families, decided time was worth more than the cost of shipping, and the catalog industry went bonkers.
“When I was a kid,” said Chiger, “you got one, maybe two catalogs a day. Now you get six or seven. Catalogs are a boomer thing. They’re easy, private and flexible--you can shop after the kids go to bed.”
During the last 10 years, she added, many catalogs began offering separate books on travel or kids or home or footwear. As the catalogers refined market segmentation, people no longer had to “sift through products they’re not interested in,” said Lenser, who is also the former president of San Francisco Music Box Co., which became one of the first specialty chains. “Fewer products allows you to build authority, to create an image of a certain lifestyle, and soon people have their favorites, which feel as if they have been created just for them.”
The process Lenser describes, of making a catalog and a line of merchandise representative of a lifestyle that resonates with a particular customer, is known as branding. And nowhere in the retail world is the desire to brand the American mind more zealous than among catalogers.
It starts in the mailroom. Twenty years ago, catalogers had no problem addressing mail to “Occupant.” Now, that’s an industry taboo. “No matter how much people complain about junk mail, they like to have something in the mailbox,” said Lenser. “Many people are lonely and isolated. They’re happy to see something addressed to them. They’d rather it was a personal letter, but they’ll settle for a catalog.”
The cover comes next. Like a magazine it has to have “news value,” according to Carol Worthington-Levy, a marketing consultant in San Jose. Mailings are carefully calculated according to how often a household makes a purchase--half of all orders come within 17 days of receipt; 70% within five weeks. Regular customers will often receive a new catalog every six weeks or so, and even if the contents have not changed one whit, the cover better have.
“Sometimes people will get a catalog and they’re just not ready to buy; the second one nudges them,” said Worthington-Levy. “But it’s easier to get them in with a new cover.”
The image on the cover should convey an image of what the company is about, a finely calibrated combination of merchandise and lifestyle.
“When a consumer internalizes the images and values that you have created around your product,” said marketing director Hooker, “when they look at a catalog and think it was written just for them, then they’re branded.”
Hooker, who has an academic background in education, believes that the experience of good marketing can be as transcendent as that of literature or art. “You come to something created by a stranger, and in it you find yourself. The process is not all that different. It’s very powerful.”
Consistent images and voice create a world familiar and inviting. Often there is a lot going on in a catalog that is not directly about the merchandise--an extended family trekking through a forest, a father smiling at his son over sand pails and starfish at the beach, a table awash in candlelight, strewn with leather-bound books and framed photos.
In advertising, said Hooker, these added images are called “commodity signs” and act as touchstones for a set of values, for a lifestyle, that the marketer wants the consumer to associate with the merchandise.
“You want the customer to read their potential self, their ideal self into the product,” he said. A successful mix of currency and repetition causes consumers to internalize these values, and so everything in the catalog becomes desirable and appropriate. “They think the catalog is speaking to them.”
Some of what goes into creating such a thing is just a good sense of graphics. The back cover is as important as the front cover because catalogs often arrive face down. The bigger the catalog, both in heft and dimension, the more authoritative it will seem, although a small niche product may benefit from being an odd size, or a “slim jim” because it looks special. Red is the most attractive color for merchandise and headlines, but background colors should be light and consistent, and the type should always be black. The product should be shown in a lovely, appropriate setting that does not include people. “You are creating a vision for the customers,” Worthington-Levy said. “If you add people, you’re making a judgment call about who would be on their invitation list.”
Those catalogs that use models, most notably the apparel catalogs, often conduct exhaustive searches for men and women who embody the lifestyle to which the merchandise is attached.
But more and more catalogs go beyond simple merchandise and lifestyle presentations, introducing narrative, be it through a series of consistent images or text. Since its launch in 1963, Land’s End has included stories, often by high-profile writers, recounting adventures or exploring in detail the origin of a certain type of wool, the tanning process of a certain leather. Other companies include a newsletter explaining changes in merchandise or goings-on among the staff, testimonials from satisfied customers or mission statements and guarantees.
Many industry analysts believe that catalogs will continue to be more experimental, and experiential; already the marriage between print and e-commerce has given mail-order retail a new dimension.
“‘Multichannel’ is the buzz word,” said Lenser. “From every direction. Williams-Sonoma started as a catalog, opened a store. Now many stores have catalogs, and almost every catalog has a Web site. A lot of the dot-comers said they were going to be pure players, but the ones who didn’t send out catalogs went out of business.”
But no matter how fabulous the catalog looks, every industry expert says, it isn’t worth much if the merchandise and the service don’t meet the customer’s expectations.
“A good catalog can get someone to buy once,” said Worthington-Levy. “But only satisfaction gets them to buy again.”
Despite the recent increase in number and visibility, catalogs are not an easy business to begin or maintain. Lenser spends much of his time convincing prospective catalogers to turn back.
“Yes, there are a lot of catalogs, but even pulled together, the top 100 don’t do the business Wal-Mart does. Most of these are mom-and-pop deals that go in and out of business, “ he said.
To start a full-color catalog of an average 60 pages would take about $3 million, Lenser said.
Still, this year, while many retailers fret over a holiday marred by recession, war and the Sept. 11 tragedy, catalogers are expecting a profitable season.
Historically, a catalog’s biggest mailing of the year occurs between October and December, when it does almost 40% of its business. Huge mailings went out this fall, despite anthrax-related fears, and they seem to be paying off.
“We’re already seeing a bump up,” said Chiger. “People aren’t traveling as much so they’re sending their gifts, and they don’t want to use the post office. And those who are flying can’t carry a bunch of bulky packages this year.”
Helpmate and burden lightener during an emotionally fraught holiday, as well as the purveyor of the perfect potential self--in marketing terms, that’s as close to magic as it gets.
