(Catalog Age) Neiman Marcus has well-developed catalog and retail merchandising divisions. But finding the optimal online merch mix involved “a lot of trial and error,” said Michael Crotty, vice president of marketing for Neiman Marcus Online, during his Feb. 20 session at eTail 2003 in Palm Springs, CA.
Part of the challenge arose from the differences bettween the catalog and retail merchandise selecitons. The stores carry far fewer home items than the catalogs, which in turn sell far fewer jewelry and beauty items. Today, Crotty said, about 60% of the Web merchandise is based on the stores’ product mix and 40% on the catalogs’.
Another challenge was convincing many of the upscale brands that Neiman Marcus sells to allow their goods to be sold online. “It took a long time to get Prada and Gucci to go online with us,” Crotty said, as they were concerned about the effect of Web availability on their own brands.
Neiman Marcus is now honing its online merchandise selection and removing less-productive products. Currently about 5,000 items are depicted on the site. Crotty said that the company is looking at revenue per depiction per category rather than per SKU. “If a category has fewer than 20 [productive] depictions, it’s probably not worth having” on the site, Crotty said.