No longer a pure-play: BackcountryStore.com debuts a catalog
Pure-play online retailer BackcountryStore.com goes multi-channel this week with the launch of its first catalog. The specialty retailer of high-end gear for trekking, skiing and other outdoor recreational pursuits is mailing more than 125,000 catalogs during the first week of November in the debut of what it says will be a regular part of its direct marketing activities. It’s the second Internet retailer in its category this season to launch a paper catalog, following by a few days the initial catalog mailing of Altrec.com.
“Because we already have the infrastructure to do direct mail, it was easy to add the catalog as another distribution channel. It’s an untapped area for us,” says Dustin Robertson, BackcountryStore.com’s director of marketing. “We plan on doing five or six catalogs a year. They’re a very cost-effective way to drive people to the web site.”
Robertson says BackcountryStore.com kept the cost of producing the catalog low by holding it to 24 pages and by using a lighter paper stock to keep the shipping weight down. The catalog is going only to its house list, which not only saves the retailer the cost of renting an outside list, but solves another challenge for BackcountryStore.com: how to get back in front of existing customers who’ve purchased from the site, but who have not given the retailer permission to market to them by e-mail.
Robertson points out that industry statistics show the house list of existing customers generally produces the highest online conversion rates among visitors to a retailer’s site. BackcountryStore.com is betting that the lift in sales from customers reminded by the catalog to visit the site in Q4 will more than offset the catalog’s cost and help reduce its overall cost of customer acquisition, currently about $8 per customer.
The catalog features selected merchandise from BackcountryStore.com`s top-selling equipment manufacturers such as The North Face and others. It also incorporates photography from renowned action sports photographer Lee Cohen. “It’s impossible to flip through the catalog without feeling at least a faint impulse to quit your day job and embark on a quest in search of an epic adventure, or powder,” says Robertson.
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