Taking a shine to gay lists

| Jane Zarem

Mainstream direct marketers are increasingly tapping gay-community lists, and with good reason: Consumers identified as part of the gay market tend to

New Lists

| MCM staff

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL COLLECTORS The 52,931 Vroom catalog buyers, 58% of whom are women, spend an average of $70 per order on collectible and licensed products

Color me accurate

| Shannon Oberndorf

According to a 1998 study from research firm Cyber Dialogue, 76% of frequent Web surfers felt that “seeing exact color of the product you’re shopping

Feel-good ordering

| Liz Kislik

No matter how well targeted your mailing lists, how inviting your photography, or how compelling your product descriptions, you can lose sales if customers

Fine-tuning fulfillment

| Paul Miller

Unlike their consumer brethren, which typically offer fewer products, many business-to-business mailers stock and sell tens of thousands of SKUs. Moreover,

Brylane’s joie de vivre marriage

| Paul Miller

Brylane, a $1.3 billion-plus mailer of 11 catalogs, is gearing up for a good time as a subsidiary of the privately held French cataloger/retailer Pinault-Printemps-Redoute

Soft on service lines

| Mark Del Franco

The catalog industry prides itself on superior customer service, but when it comes to staffing a separate telephone line for service, many catalogers

Buy American with new catalog

| Moira Pascale

Americans aren’t the only consumers to value a “made in the USA” label on their products. Lenexa, KS-based Smith-Dale, a wholesaler of U.S.-made handcrafted

Coldwater Cools Off

| Shannon Oberndorf

For three years, apparel and gifts cataloger Coldwater Creek was hot. Sales grew an average of 60% a year, from $76 million in 1995 to $247 million for