Ledyard, CT—We could all use a little help to get by these days, and that’s exactly what a NEMOA panel delivered. The NEMOA fall conference, held Sept. 16-18 at the Foxwoods Resort Casino, included the session “When The Gamble Pays Off: 50 Tips, Tricks and Ideas to Guarantee Survival in a Risky Economy.”
The panel included Chris Bradley, president of bedding cataloger Cuddledown, Sharon Dunn, president of bird-feeding supplies mailer Duncraft, and Glenda Lehman Ervin, vice president of marketing for Lehman’s, a retailer of old-fashioned, non-electric general merchandise. Here are a few tips they provided.
Improve your in-stock position on core inventory. Cuddledown has in the past year identified the core products it should never be out of stock on. That’s been a big help in the past year, Bradley said.
Keep in mind that men and women shop differently–know how and why. Men are motivated by rank and women are motivated by relationships, Ervin said. In other words, “Men buy, and women shop.”
Be sure to keep operations in the loop. Duncraft sells some bird-food items with special storage needs, Dunn said, so if marketing and operations are not communicating, the catalog could be open to inventory nightmares.
Define your brand. What do you have that no one else does? “You can’t expect the public to come to you unless you tell them why they should,” Ervin said.
Shift barcoding to vendors. Cuddledown now has its vendors apply barcodes at the factory, which helps it move some labor costs to the supplier, Bradley says. While most are willing to do it, he admits that some vendors—particularly his Italian suppliers—refuse.
Give phone reps the ability to see inventory in your retail stores. If a customer is looking for a discontinued item and your phone reps can see it’s available at a retail or outlet store, they can arrange to have the store fulfill the order, Bradley says.
Run contests in your e-mail promotions. For instance, Duncraft has run contests looking for its customers’ best squirrel photos, Dunn said.
“Right-size” your catalog. “We’re really trying to cut our catalog costs,” Dunn said. As such Duncraft’s catalog went from 56 pages to 44, and from three versions to one.
Take photography in-house. Cuddledown is saving a lot of money doing with thanks to digital photography, Bradley says. The benefits are more than a cost-per-shot savings, he notes; you save time and have more flexibility.
Remember that customer satisfaction is no longer enough: You need loyalty. “Quality married to consistency breeds loyalty,” Ervin said.