Flora and Henri, a Seattle-based marketer of upscale children’s clothing, will reduce its catalog prospecting by 30% this year. The company will channel some of the cost savings into opening a store on New York’s Upper East Side to complement its flagship Seattle store, says owner/designer Jane Hedreen.
“We’re finding retail a more direct way of capturing our customer,” Hedreen says. The five-year-old company plans to reduce its catalog circulation from 150,000 to 125,000 books this year. “But we’re not deemphasizing the catalog, just deemphasizing prospecting with it,” she adds. “We’ll still do some prospecting with catalog lists we’ve used before, but we’ll reduce the numbers.”
The company, which won’t reveal its annual sales, will also mail only two editions this year, compared with three last year. “We’ve done two editions in the past,” Hedreen says, “so we’ll go back to that this year, in fall and winter. We may have it in our budget to also mail some smaller catalogs promoting our Essentials line of cotton knits at lower prices.”
The company’s Essentials line of children’s T-shirts, which range in price from $20-$30, “is a big part of our business,” Hedreen says. “Even though we’ve never promoted the items separately, such as in a different catalog, our customers buy them consistently, and we’d like to do more with them.” Most Essentials merchandise is in the $50-$80 price range, compared with up to $200 for Flora and Henri’s other apparel.
As of early February, Flora and Henri had made an offer on space in New York but had yet to sign a lease, and Hedreen was unsure when she’d be able to open the store.