Pier 1 Pulls Plug on Catalog/Web Business
Pier 1 is exiting the direct business. The home furnishings and decor retailer announced on June 21 it will shelve its three-year-old catalog and its seven-year-old e-commerce site by the end of August.
Retail
Sharper Image Sales Slide Continues
Fiscal problems continued to plague consumer electronics cataloger/retailer Sharper Image during the first quarter ended April 30.
Home Depot Supply Sold
A trio of private equity firms–Bain Capital, The Carlyle Group, and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice–have snapped up Home Depot
Neiman Marcus Direct Up 8.7% In 3Q
At upscale apparel and decor mailer Neiman Marcus Direct, which includes the catalog and online operations for Neiman Marcus and Horchow and the Bergdorf Goodman Website, fiscal third-quarter sales rose 8.7%
Find Your Geographic Sweet Spots and Dead Zones
Mailers have used zip tables for years to find hot areas to mail deeper and poor areas to avoid. You should consider optimizing your prospecting lists by geographic sweet spots to squeeze more profitable response from prospecting, while cutting out your catalog’s dead zones.
Using Catalogs to Drive Retail Traffic
In addition to the typical modus operandi of ordering retail trade area prospecting models from the co-ops, there is a good source of names hidden in the housefile segments, and in prospect lists normally overlooked for traditional catalog mailings, due to marginal performance. There is still some retail gold left in those marginal names you may be thinking of discarding.
Google, American Blinds Get Ready to Rumble over Trademark Keywords
(Searchline) The online advertising industry is moving fast these days. But apparently that doesn’t oblige the legal system to keep pace. Case in point: The lawsuit by American Blind & Wallpaper Factory against Google for alleged trademark infringement, which may finally get to go before a jury this November–almost four years after it was filed.
Dell Expands Beyond Direct with Wal-Mart Deal
In a company memo last month, Dell founder/CEO Michael Dell referred to the company
Neeps Sold to Doctors Foster and Smith
Pet supplies cataloger Doctors Foster and Smith is acquiring pet products Web merchant Neeps for an undisclosed price.
Financial Update: Bottom Line, a Mixed Fourth Quarter
For the 11 publicly traded business-to-consumer merchants tracked by Multichannel Merchant, fourth-quarter results were mixed. Sales rose for all but two of the companies. But five of the 11 suffered bottom-line erosion.