Apparel cataloger Coldwater Creek is taking a new path. After testing footwear spin-off catalog Footnotes this past spring, the Sandpoint, ID-based company plans to roll out with a fall edition.
The 48-page Footnotes catalog, which measures 7″ × 7″, sells shoes and accessories such as handbags and jewelry, along with some shirts. Coldwater Creek mailed 500,000-800,000 catalogs to a portion of its house file, including shoe buyers and its best customers, in April. Footnotes items are also available on the Coldwater Creek Website. The catalog will help determine which product categories to expand within the company’s retail and Internet channels, says Coldwater CEO Georgia Shonk-Simmons.
Although Shonk-Simmons won’t comment on response rates, she says that so far the new catalog is performing well and that the average order size is $100-$120. Coldwater Creek will mail out Footnotes’ fall edition in September, again using only house file names. This edition will include boots, handbags, and sweaters-in “a true fall/holiday assortment,” Shonk-Simmons says. The company is waiting for fall results of the Footnotes catalog before putting together a marketing plan.
In the meantime, beginning with its other fall catalogs, Coldwater Creek will offer apparel appropriate for the current season, rather than selling its fall clothing in the summer months or warm-weather clothing in January. “Our customer is the busy professional female baby boomer who wants to ‘buy now, wear now,’” says Shonk-Simmons.