Another online-only retailer looks offline to help build web sales
Home Décor Products Inc. isn’t the first online retailer to try its luck with a paper catalog, having been preceded by e-retailers such as Backcountry.com, Altrec.com, eBags.com and others, but now it’s the latest web retailer hoping to borrow the proven strength of the traditional catalog channel to help build web sales.
Based on a test of 50,000 in-box catalogs in October for one of its brands, HomeClick.com, which drove an estimated $300,000 in incremental sales, Home Decor Products will expand distribution to 250,000 for a new paper catalog this month, including 150,000 that will be mailed for the first time, CEO Mike Golden tells Internet Retailer.
Golden says the initial in-box catalog test last fall was produced in-house at a cost of about $25,000. He believes the estimate of $300,000 in incremental revenue from the catalog is conservative, as it’s based on the response to a special offer in the catalog, and didn’t track other sales beyond the special offer that may have started with the catalog.
“We are doubling the number of catalogs we are dropping into our boxes to 100,000 and then adding an additional 150,000 we are mailing out. About 50,000 of them are from our best customer house file. The rest is from list rental at targeted publications,” he says.
Golden adds that additional resources have been applied to creating and distributing the new spring catalog. He calls the results from the low investment in its first foray into a traditional catalog last fall “Amazing. The catalog turned out to be one of the most successful marketing programs we’ve ever done—and we typically are focused online.”
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