From the Archive: Catalogues
‘From the Archive’ is the regular column that revisits some of the more interesting retail stories covered over the past 30 years by Glynn Davis for a variety of publications.
This period covers many seismic structural changes in the industry including the emergence of the internet. Alongside the actual stories Glynn will be adding commentary around each of the pieces that will seek to put the articles into context with today’s landscape.
Subscribe to TRBFrom The Industry Standard Europe (1 February 2001)
Back in 2001 retailers were coming around to recognising that multi-channel was the way to go but for the pioneering online-only businesses at the time this didn’t mean opening shops but was about publishing paper-based catalogues.
These weren’t solely about driving sales to the online channel but more to the telephone. In the early noughties the phone (landlines included) still represented a decent percentage of sales for many retailers. The pure-plays listed in my article show ThinkNatural having 34% phone-based sales while SimplyOrganic had a hefty 60% phone and fax (now we are going into the archives!). Phone sales today must surely be close to zero for all retailers.
What the piece also highlights is that paper catalogues proved to be a powerful driver of sales for even those businesses aimed at a young – tech-savvy – audience such as online gadgets seller Firebox. The catalogue it published over Christmas 1999 generated an extra 10% of sales and according to Michael Smith, co-founder of Firebox, these revenues came from a different demographic to that using its online store. For those people interested Smith went on to found Moshi Monsters and the successful meditation and sleep app Calm.
For Smith it was definitely about building-out a multi-channel model as he suggested: “If you don’t do it then you are at a disadvantage. It’s all about multi-channel. Bricks, clicks and flicks are the only way to do it.”
This was also noted by Carol Dukes, founder of online health products retailer ThinkNatural – that was bought by another pure-play Greenfingers, who stated: “At the moment, although older people are turning to the Web with great enthusiasm, they are still more comfortable with telephone ordering from catalogues.” This was evidenced by the catalogue pushing phone sales up to 50% of turnover when it was published over the 1999 festive period.
Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com, was also quoted in the article having distributed 500,000 catalogues selling various gifts. Interestingly, he points out that they were published mainly to test the company’s new voice recognition software for phone bookings for its core holidays and flights proposition. Hoberman’s technology focus has been evident in his future activities including creating Founders Forum that supports tech entrepreneurs.
Most gung-ho for catalogues was Ian Smith, founder of SimplyOrganic, who suggested he couldn’t understand how pure-play online players could survive without using catalogues to prompt sales. “It’s wacko. If you are selling products then you have to look at all ways to market and those that don’t will not survive,” he said.
His thoughts were unable to save the paper-based catalogue as many long-established publications have ultimately fallen by the wayside over recent years. Freemans finally succumbed to ditching its printed catalogue in late-2023 after almost 120 years. It followed Argos that abandoned its big book in 2021 after nearly 50 years. They both acknowledged that in a digital-first world the catalogue represents something from a bygone era and has no place today.
But not so fast. Since then we have had something of a modest renaissance of the catalogue. In this digital-first world retailers need something to cut-through and old-school catalogues could be the answer. In the US clothing brand J. Crew re-launched its catalogue after last publishing it in 2017. The return of the publication coincided with the company’s ‘Fall 2024’ campaign.
Many other retailers now produce small, seasonal paper-based publications that do exactly the same thing as the catalogues distributed by those pioneering pure-play retailers who recognised that old-school print is simply another channel to market that complements digital routes.
