July 1, 2010
Cover Story
MCM 100: The List is In
The Largest Multichannel Merchant companies got a little smaller in 2009. No real surprise, given that it was one of the worst retail years on record,...
Editor's Note
A new crop of catalogs
When It Comes to the Web, most merchants are happy to talk about what they're doing even how they're doing. Getting them to talk about general sales is...
News
DMA To Sue Colorado Over Use Tax
The Direct Marketing Association will sue the state of Colorado over its new out-of-state sales tax laws. The DMA expects to file its suit within the next few weeks, and is soliciting its members to chip in for its legal expenses. The Colorado law requires marketers that ship orders into the state to provide purchase information to the Colorado Department of Revenue regarding who its customers were and what they spent. The notification requirement applies only to purchases on which the customer paid no Colorado taxes....
Monks Close Abbey Press Catalog, Starting New Web Venture
After struggling with declining sales over the past five years, the Benedictine monks of Saint Meinrad Archabbey that own and operate religious gifts marketer Abbey Press have closed its catalog and Website....
New Sharper Image Catalog Arrives This Week
Relaunched gifts and gadgets merchant Sharper Image has mailed its first print catalog just in time for Father’s Day. ...
USPS’s Susan Plonkey on Fixing the Postal Service
Susan M. Plonkey was named new acting president, mailing and shipping services, for the U.S. Postal Service on June 3...
Signature Hardware Adds Outdoor Furniture
Signature Hardware is heading outdoors: The direct merchant of antique-style reproduction fixtures for the home has expanded its merchandise line to include outdoor furniture....
Fat Brain Toys Mails First Print Catalog
After conducting considerable research and listening to customer feedback, Fat Brain Toys has launched a print catalog. ...
ACMA Educates the USPS on Catalogs
You Wouldn't Know It by the Punishing Rate Hikes for Standard Mail Flats in Recent Years, But the U.S. Postal Service wants you to mail more catalogs....
Merchants Off to Fine First-Quarter Start
Consumer and Business Spending May Not quite be back to historic levels, but if the first quarter is any indication, the publicly traded merchants started...
Catalog
Sell the Sizzle with Clarity
It's been considerably more than 70 years since supersalesman Elmer Wheeler published his book, Tested Sentences that Sell, which included the immortal...
Creating your best holiday catalogs ever
It may be the middle of summer, but in the catalog world, the holiday season is here. Merchants have finalized their orders, marketers have anticipated...
Third Quarter Price Increase Still Up in the Air
The paper mills would like to see an increase in the range of 3% to 4% in the third quarter, especially the mills that produce coated paper, according...
E-Commerce
The Value of Link Building
Links have long been the currency of the Web, thanks in no small part to Google and its PageRank algorithm (named after Larry Page, cofounder of Google)....
SOFTWARE: Think BIG with Web widgets
Until recently, widgets were thought of as small programs that could add a neat effect to a Website, a desktop or a mobile phone. They were more about...
Marketing
Branding from the inside out
What's the single biggest mistake that most marketers make when it comes to delivering a brand experience? Communicating your brand to customers only....
Merchants Face Up to Facebook
Orvis launched a Facebook page as a way of communicating with the fly fishers who make up a significant part of its audience. For Kmart Design, Facebook...
The sins of silos
Are internal company silos keeping your brand from becoming the best it can be? You know what I mean: competition between departments, information withholding,...
Lists & Data Strategies
B-TO-B: Are you ready for lead nurturing 2.0?
Lead nurturing is a great way for business-to-business marketers to make the most of every opportunity and lower the cost of sales. But the process has...
No Growth for Gardening Catalog Universe
The gardening catalog market lost about 100,000 active names in the first quarter of 2010, according to New York-based list brokerage firm ParadysMatera....
Operations & Fullfillment
How to Benchmark External Rates
Despite what your parcel carrier representative tells you, you could probably be getting better pricing. How can you be certain your rates are truly best...
12 Mistakes to Avoid in Systems Selection
No matter the type of system, merchants tend to make the same mistakes when shopping for software. These errors can lead to budget overruns on the initial...
Backword
Damn Your Dirty Data
I Keep My Postal Carrier in Good Shape with the number of catalogs she delivers to my house every day. I'm a frequent catalog shopper and a mail order...
Five Considerations Before Twittering Over New New Media
It’s easy to get excited about new media like Twitter that explode into the mainstream. There are already over 100 million registered Twitter users. It is even easier to get excited when we learn that Dell sold $6.5 million worth of computers through Twitter in 2009 a threefold increase over the year before. But before we go all atwitter over Tweets, Dell’s social media “success” needs a little context....
This is one Crappy Cake
An MCM Staffer was paging through RSH's Summer 2010 catalog edition and spotted a gorgeous white layer cake. Before she could get too lost in visions...
