Guest View: Search Expert, Blogger Extraordinaire Posts 9 Prognostications About Your Future
March 2008 By Alan Rimm-Kaufman
As per my headline, for this issue of Catalog Success: The Corner View, I hand my pen — um, keyboard — over to Catalog Success E-Commerce Insights columnist Alan Rimm-Kaufman.
Alan heads the Rimm-Kaufman Group, an online agency providing large-scale paid search bid management and Web site testing services, and was formerly a marketing executive with the Crutchfield catalog of consumer electronics.
I leave the stage to Alan, who starts with a potential scenario followed by nine predictions for the future of the catalog/multichannel business as it affects you.
Scene: A bar at a conference hotel during a marketing trade show.
Bill: Tim? Is that you?
Tim: Bill! Let me buy you a beer. How long’s it been? Four years? You’re looking great.
Bill: Thanks. I think we last met up at a catalog conference in 2008. So yes, about four years ago now.
Tim: Gee, have things changed.
Bill: Really.
Tim: And it seems to just keep getting worse. Would you ever have imagined we’d look back on 2008 as the “good old days?” Postage at 42 cents? Gas at $4? Sheesh, cataloging was easy then.
Bill: Too true.
Tim: Prospecting and acquisition mailing was still legal in ’08, right? The Never-Mail-Me Act hadn’t yet passed, the catalog co-ops were still in business and you could still rent lists. Remember the old list rental business? All those brokers and managers? And back then Catalog Choice was the only Never-Mail house.
Bill: Different times. But how’s your business?
Tim: We’re hanging in there, but it’s really tough. We’ve been shrinking — another round of layoffs — and we’re down to only three titles. We keep losing sales to the Web pure-plays, and the brick-and-mortar retailers have killer virtual reality stores online. We’re still mailing catalogs to our buyers, but the response just isn’t there. How’s your work going?
Bill: Oh great, really great. I started a new job last fall, and that’s a blast. Great people, interesting projects. Frankly, we’re struggling to keep up with the growth.
Tim: No way! What cataloger are you working for?
Bill: Oh, no, I left the catalog industry. I joined Google just after the Yahoo! acquisition. I’m managing the sporting goods category for GoogleMall. You wouldn’t believe the power of our customer-intent predictive models …
Alan heads the Rimm-Kaufman Group, an online agency providing large-scale paid search bid management and Web site testing services, and was formerly a marketing executive with the Crutchfield catalog of consumer electronics.
I leave the stage to Alan, who starts with a potential scenario followed by nine predictions for the future of the catalog/multichannel business as it affects you.
Scene: A bar at a conference hotel during a marketing trade show.
Bill: Tim? Is that you?
Tim: Bill! Let me buy you a beer. How long’s it been? Four years? You’re looking great.
Bill: Thanks. I think we last met up at a catalog conference in 2008. So yes, about four years ago now.
Tim: Gee, have things changed.
Bill: Really.
Tim: And it seems to just keep getting worse. Would you ever have imagined we’d look back on 2008 as the “good old days?” Postage at 42 cents? Gas at $4? Sheesh, cataloging was easy then.
Bill: Too true.
Tim: Prospecting and acquisition mailing was still legal in ’08, right? The Never-Mail-Me Act hadn’t yet passed, the catalog co-ops were still in business and you could still rent lists. Remember the old list rental business? All those brokers and managers? And back then Catalog Choice was the only Never-Mail house.
Bill: Different times. But how’s your business?
Tim: We’re hanging in there, but it’s really tough. We’ve been shrinking — another round of layoffs — and we’re down to only three titles. We keep losing sales to the Web pure-plays, and the brick-and-mortar retailers have killer virtual reality stores online. We’re still mailing catalogs to our buyers, but the response just isn’t there. How’s your work going?
Bill: Oh great, really great. I started a new job last fall, and that’s a blast. Great people, interesting projects. Frankly, we’re struggling to keep up with the growth.
Tim: No way! What cataloger are you working for?
Bill: Oh, no, I left the catalog industry. I joined Google just after the Yahoo! acquisition. I’m managing the sporting goods category for GoogleMall. You wouldn’t believe the power of our customer-intent predictive models …
Companies Mentioned:
 |
|
All About Email Creative
The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button COPYWRITING
Who's Charging What!
BrandAbout
Hi Cindy --
With all due respect, I really do believe #8, and it wasn't intended to be shameless self-promotion. My agency doesn't even provide SEO services. And we're not the only SEM firm out there by any means.
As per #9, no, the pureplays aren't rolling shipping into their product cost, they're taking it out of their marketing cost. Think Amazon.
Thanks for the comments, much appreciated!
:)
Alan
Item 8 is shameless self-promotion, and item 9 is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. Of course free shipping gets worked into the product cost. How else would it get paid for? By the free shipping fairies?
I appreciate Alan's insights and agree with many of them. However, I also remember the first Catalog Conference I attended in 1999. I had just gotten into the cataloging business with Lehman's, and after that conference I thought I had boarded a sinking ship. The overriding theme that year was that catalogs are dinosaurs and that in a few years only the internet will matter. Rising costs, internet pure plays, and ecological issues were all reasons given at that time.
Here we are almost 10 years later and, although some catalogers have fallen on hard times, there are still quite a few catalog companies who are doing well, while lots of internet pure plays have gone the way of the dinosaur, or, interestingly, have started to mail catalogs in order to reach potential customers through a different channel. They discovered what many of their customers already knew; there is something special and pleasurable about sitting down with a catalog as opposed to staring at a computer screen.
I'm sure that the movement to eliminate unwanted catalogs will continue, but let's remember that we are only mailing catalogs to proven mail order buyers. These people, for the most part, like to get catalogs. Do they get some they don't want? Certainly. Are they happy when the stumble on to a new one that they never heard of before and has products in which they are interested? Indeed. Will they still order on the web even though they got the catalog in the mail? Probably.
In the end, many of Alan's statements come down to things that we have all known for years. It is all about giving customers good service, a good value, and unique products that they want or need. The cost of doing business will likely increase, but diligence will allow us to continue to be in business and still be profitable. I don't think the final bell has tolled yet. And, it may not toll as soon as we may think.