The Red Hats By You Catalog
I received a request for an update on a blog from a few years ago on our catalog. We had designed and printed a catalog a few years ago and we circulated a fairly small amount of them.. no more than 1500, I think. We had also put a request for the catalog on our home page, and were swamped with requests, sending out stacks every day. It was really exciting.
Despite the response, we chose not to reprint. And that was a really frustrating reality for us. We were hoping that our audience of older.. senior women, would be more comfortable ordering from a catalog instead of online...figuring that they'd trust it more if they could send a check. And when the request for catalogs went through the roof, we were sure we were onto something fantastic.
However... I don't think so. We still did 98% of our business online. It's not often that we have an order come in by mail. And when they do come by mail, it was through a process we had already had put in motion BEFORE the catalog. We have a note on our checkout page that says "If you want to order by mail... stop, and print this page, and send your order to....." That has been very well received by our customers and that printout screen accompanies more mail orders than catalog order forms .
The most frustrating part of a catalog for a small ecomm like ours was that our product line changed too fast. So if we did get an order, chances are that we'd be out of stock. And we'd either lose the order, or try to sell them on something else.
I would say that the catalog barely paid for itself. But that's a hard thing to quantify. Who's to say that reprinting or not reprinting was the right decision. If we do ever reprint, I may not throw it up on the home page like I did before, and save the catalogs for those who call to request it. Anyone will take a free catalog, right? why not?
So that's sort of the long and short of it. I know other companies provide their catalog in pdf form online. I've considered doing that too... actually, I'd forgotten about it. That allows you to update your content as it changes, and still gives a person something tangible to pass around at their Red Hat Meetings. I guess I'll have to add that to my long list of TO DO's. I just never personally download those things, so I get frustrated thinking about maintaining it.... another thing to worry about. But I guess it's worth a shot if it turns out more business.
I appreciate your ideas here...
