You can have too much of a good thing. That’s why Edmund Optics recently launched an overstocks catalog, Anchor Optical Surplus. The Barrington, NJ-based company, which sells optical and imaging components solutions to semiconductor, telecommunications, and medical professionals through its Edmund Industrial Optics catalog, mailed 35,000 copies of Anchor Optical in November to house file and rented names.
The 40-page two-color (black and green) catalog sells the company’s surplus optical components for industrial applications, such as prisms, lenses, and mirrors, and offers closeouts of optical instruments, from microscopes to spectrometers. The product line will keep changing as stock is depleted and new overstocks become available. No technical data for the items is provided in the catalog. The catalog complements the Anchor Optical Website, which launched in January 2001.
Although the catalog targets the research and development market, including design engineers and universities, the company expects the catalog to eventually gain a consumer audience of hobbyists and science enthusiasts as well. In fact, says vice president of marketing Nicole Edmund, part of Anchor Optical’s target audience will be similar to that of Edmund Scientific, a hobbyists’ catalog that Edmund Optics sold to Science Kit & Boreal Laboratories, a division of laboratory supplies cataloger VWR Scientific Products, in January 2001.
To help promote the new catalog and Website, Edmund Optics has listed Anchor Optical in online directories with optical industry sites such as Optics.org. The company also runs space ads in optical trade magazines. The catalog will mail once a year, with the next edition planned for September. Edmund Optics expects to increase the book’s fall circulation by 10%.