February 1, 2010
Cover Story
A little more action: Holiday sales robust in 2009
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about holiday 2009 is that merchants get to compare it to holiday 2008 the worst season for retail sales in decades....
Burpee Gets a Boost from New Year's Resolution Garden
Seed merchant saw a 5% spike in sales between Christmas and New Year's with an e-mail and public relations campaign....
Editor's Note
Time for a DMA redo
JUST AS THIS ISSUE WAS GOING TO PRESS we got word that John A. Greco Jr. had resigned as president/CEO of the Direct Marketing Association. My first reaction:...
News
Discounts Spur Use of Intelligent Mail Barcodes
MANY MAILERS WERE LEERY OF THE INTELLIGENT MAIL BARCODE (IMB) when the U.S. Postal Service began accepting mail bearing the new 65-bar barcode in May....
UPS Cutting 1,800 Management Jobs
PARCEL DELIVERY GIANT UPS ANNOUNCED LATE LAST WEEK it plans to eliminate 1,800 management and administrative jobs. The job reduction represents nearly...
Target Buys Smith & Hawken
General merchant Target Corp. Friday announced it has acquired the Smith & Hawken brand and other intellectual property from Smith & Hawken, LTD, a subsidiary of The Scotts Co....
1-800-Flowers.com Finds Buyer for Gifts/Kid’s Unit
It took more than two years, but multititle mailer 1-800-Flowers.com announced Dec. 7 it is finally selling its home and children’s gifts business. ...
Figi's Business Unit to Target Retailers
Figi's Business Services, a subsidiary of food gifts cataloger Figi's, is partnering with the Greenwood Group to sell goods to the retail market. ...
La Tienda Opens First Retail Location
Spanish foods importer La Tienda opened its first retail store on Dec. 10 in Williamsburg, VA. Other than its proximity to its headquarters in nearby Toano, VA, why Williamsburg?...
Third-quarter didn’t bring relief to merchants
THE THIRD QUARTER OF 2009 DIDN'T BRING MUCH RELIEF for those expecting an economic rebound. The financial results of the profiled companies show further...
Catalog
Sticking my head into the lion's mouth
Every year it gets harder. No, it doesn't get harder because we have fewer catalogs. It gets harder because it's more difficult to isolate catalogs that...
E-Commerce
Optimizing Your Site for Bing
Bing, Microsoft's latest search engine iteration, had 6% of the worldwide search engine market share upon its launch in May 2009. Six months later, Bing...
In this corner...Title MMA
Title MMA specializes in mixed martial arts equipment, fight apparel and casual clothing. The merchant gamely offered up its site as a contender for a...
Marketing
Eight reasons why direct mail still works
Multichannel marketers today tend to get caught up in the frenzy of the next greatest trend. What about Web 3.0? What's the hot social networking application?...
Lists & Data Strategies
Cleaning up b-to-b files
Business-to-business merchants traditionally have not been the most savvy when it comes to list hygiene. Why's that? The theory had always been that if...
Gifts Universe Going Down
THE GIFTS AND COLLECTIBLES MARKET LOST ABOUT 400,000 ACTIVE NAMES in the third quarter of 2009, according to New York-based list brokerage firm ParadysMatera....
Operations & Fullfillment
Benchmarking: Transportation rates and services
Has your parcel carrier rep ever said that you have the best rates in his/her territory? That they can't believe their pricing department authorized pricing...
The state of free shipping offers
Multichannel merchants continue to have a love/hate relationship with free shipping promotions: They love the lift they see with these offers and they...
Backword
Letters/Opinion
A TOAST TO BETTER TIMES IN BUSINESS I am elated to say good riddance to 2009 and ready to move out of recovery mode and really make things happen! It's...
Blogbit
Have you checked out the Big Fat Marketing Blog (www.bigfatmarketingblog.com) yet? Here's a recent post from Melissa Dowling as she looks at a new from...
Talbots Offers Instant "Giftification"
Here's a genius idea to steal from Talbots. A few weeks before Christmas, a Multichannel Merchant staff member received a blank Talbots gift card with...
