Dear Industry Member:
We’d like to bring to your attention an article published in the Harvard Business Review earlier this week (copy & paste in Google or another search engine the headline, “Why Catalogs Are Making a Comeback Harvard Business Review,” and you’ll find it right away).
What’s impressive about this piece, which through a study demonstrates the extent to which mailed catalogs in conjunction with email communications can produce considerably greater results than email marketing alone, is not that it’s a Harvard-penned piece. It’s how the article relates to a somewhat newer mix of merchants who are succeeding with print catalogs.
The article asks, ‘Has the catalog made a comeback?’
“Retailers in some categories appear to think so,” the article says. “Many brands and retailers, such as Nordstrom, Patagonia, Crate and Barrel, Restoration Hardware, and leisure services such as vacations and cruise lines, are investing heavily in physical catalogs. Even pure-online retailers that prided themselves in creating efficient and digitized consumer experiences such as Wayfair, Bonobos, Birchbox, and Amazon are now printing catalogs.”
In many ways, the Harvard piece, which is penned by Jonathan Z. Zhang is on the marketing faculty at Colorado State University, confirms ACMA’s efforts to broaden our membership beyond pure print-based catalog merchants and their suppliers. As our President & Executive Director Hamilton Davison wrote in his annual letter to members recently, “Scale matters in Washington. Increasingly, active ACMA issues are equally relevant to all types of remote merchants. With that in mind, ACMA is increasing its efforts to bring in other companies.”
If you recently heard about ACMA or consider your business only distantly related to a traditional catalog operation, consider membership, as you will be surprised at the common bonds developing almost daily as ACMA tackles member issues like remote sales tax, tariffs on foreign imports, consumer privacy, and the like. If you are an ACMA member, please continue spreading the word, as the larger your ACMA becomes, the more effective we can be for you.