Operations BENCHMARK’99

| MCM staff

Welcome to the 1999 Catalog Age Benchmark Report on Operations, the third in a series of exclusive surveys produced this year by the staff of Catalog

Transcat

| Leslie Goff

Some catalogers worry that their Websites will cannibalize their mainstay business. Business-to-business mailer Transcat is hoping that its site will

Planning ahead

| Moira Pascale

Carrie Van Dyck is co-owner of Herb Farm, a Fall City, WA-based catalog of herbs and related products. Annual sales, $2 million; annual circulation, 270,000.We

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,

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

CONDUCTING A CATALOG OPERATIONS AUDIT

| Curt Barry

Promises, promises: All catalogs make them, but the best actually deliver both the goods and the service. Any catalog operations manager can tell you

The missing link?

| MCM staff

Although most catalogers on the Internet claim to be transactional, several industry professionals believe that more than 90% of Internet marketers do

Cover

| MCM staff

J. CREW TO PHASE OUT CLIFFORD & WILLS Having failed to find a buyer for its 74 million Clifford & Wills women’s apparel catalog, cataloger/retailer J.

Trolling for customers

| Moira Pascale

Bill Guyre is vice president of the not-for-profit, New York-based Lighthouse Catalog, which sells specialized products for people with impaired vision.

Sweetening the deal

| Shannon Oberndorf

Offering incentives such as discounts, free shipping, and gifts with purchases has been part of catalog marketing for decades. And now that the Internet