USPS, FedEx and UPS battle on fuel surcharge

Has you seen the ads running on television from the USPS?  I agree with the blog, cuppamarcom.com, written by Deborah Brody, a marketing communications freelancer.  Recently she wrote on USP’s or unique selling propositions.  “A company that has figured it out, finally, is the US Postal Service (USPS). Believe it or not, their latest campaign is a stroke of genius. It exploits their true USP. …“

Shippers such as catalogers should reconsider the USPS, despite their hitting us with a huge increase in the cost to mail our print promotions.  Anyway, here’s the good news/bad surcharge news from FedEx and UPS for the month of September, 2008

Fed Ex Fuel Surcharge

Surcharge Effective Date

Sept. 1, 2008–Oct. 5, 2008    10.50%

UPS Fuel Surcharge

Ground
Effective September 1, 2008: 10.50%

September, 2008, Diesel Fuel Prices

Building linkbacks to an e-commerce site

It is time to hear from our internet search guru, Chuck from Pop Labs.  Here is the transcript for the accompanying YouTube video on building linkbacks to your website.  And, naturally, don’t be shy in linking back to The Catalog Chronicles so you never miss out.

You create a new site and its content heavy,
With the right amount of pictures you believe it’s ready,
So you launch it trying to put money in da bank,
But when you search and try to find yourself, you can’t,
So you thank until your mind goes blank,
Got titles and headers but no page rank,
Sooner or later it will show if I wait,
In the meantime make sure my code validate,
And it do,
Hmm, now what I’m supposed to do,
Add meta information and alt tags too,
Still don’t get listing,
Something must be missing,
Brad and Chuck recommended doing link building,
So you start hunting down sites like a predator,
Doing back links on all your competitors,
Whoever linking to them need to link to me,
Is it free, do we swap, or do I pay a fee,
Well take it from us, before you take that step,
Some things about the site that you might want to check,
Did they use a link farm or some dirty tactics,
Could have a bad effect on your site that’s drastic,
Could’ve link baited, look at what they created,
Compare it to yours, is it even related,
Take the time, go inspect and see,
Take advantage of paid directories,
If you follow all the steps with a little bit of patience,
Get links from relevant sites that are favorites,
Update your content on the regular basis,
I’m confident you’ll make it to first page placement.

Montgomery Ward joins The Swiss Colony family of brands

True to our name it is only appropriate we capture each significant moment in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Montgomery Ward.  Arguably the first mail order catalog, Montgomery Ward.com was acquired by Midwest Catalog Brands Inc., a subsidiary of The Swiss Colony Inc., from Direct Marketing Services Inc. (DMSI) for $15.5 million on August 5, 2008.

Montgomery Ward closed its catalog and retail operations in 2001 due to falling sales. DMSI purchased much of the brand’s intellectual property assets in 2001.  For some time The Swiss Colony has been expanding into various segments of retail, such as fashion and home décor, a far throw from smoked meat and marzipan.

With a broader product offering and recent moves to strengthen its internet businesses, John Baumann, president of The Swiss Colony said “It is extremely difficult to grow consumer catalog businesses today. We’re finding that more consumers are using Internet search engines for shopping or are visiting name brand sites,” he said in a statement. “Although the Ward brand needs to be rebuilt, it does have strong recognition among consumers.”  The acquisition also included the Charles Keath and HomeVisions catalog and Internet properties.

As of this writing the three brands are offline.  A search for MontgomeryWard.com produced a rather ugly web page which said in part.

“We are in the process of moving Montgomery Ward onto a new operating platform and expect to have our new website operating soon. Your business is important to us, and we apologize for any inconvenience during this transition. In the meantime, please use the following contact information…: (a couple of email addresses guiding visitors to customer service.)

One would hope the websites will be re-launched soon; the catalog is expected to reappear in early 2009.

Diesel Fuel Costs decline 4 weeks in a row…but too late for back to school.

After reaching an all time high of $4.764 national average for the week of July 21, 2008, diesel fuel has dropped to $4.353, national average. Unfortunately, fuel surcharge rates applicable during August are based on a trailing average. Therefore UPS’s surcharge effective August 4, 2008 is 10.25% and FedEx’s is 10.25% as well through August 31, 2008. FedEx’s surcharge will rise to 10.50% for September and continue to hammer online vendors and retailers offering Free Shipping during the critical “back to school” selling period.

NEMOA goes Green, extends registration

NEMOA’s Fall ‘08 Conference is focused on the sustainability – of our industry!

On September 17-19, some of the best thinkers in the catalog/etail world will be gathering in Burlington, Vermont. The theme of NEMOA’s Fall ‘08 Conference is “Growing Green”.

On Wednesday and Thursday, industry leaders will present best practices for ways to grow a business, stay green, and stay profitable.

On Friday, NEMOA’s “Virtual Tour” features six Internet experts, including Rick Klau from Google, who will walk NEMOA attendees through best practices in redesign, SEO, email marketing, RSS, web analytics, and paid search

Conference details and registration information are available on line at www.nemoa.org. Save with early-bird registration, extended till 8/25/08.

Celebrate Express Acquired

Celebrate Express was sold to holding company Liberty Media for $31 million in cash, or $3.90 per share. Having been approved by the boards of both companies, the deal is expected to close in the third quarter. Liberty Interactive has ownership interests in QVC.com, Expedia and IAC/InterActive Corp and plans to merge Celebrate Express into BUYSEASONS, Inc. the internet costume and party retailer founded in 1999 and acquired by Liberty Media in 2006.

The company was founded in 1994 by Mike and Jan Jewell as Birthday Express, a catalog retailer of party supplies. It launched CelebrateExpress.com two years later. The company went public in late 2004. On its first day of trading under the Nasdaq symbol “BDAY,” shares reached as high as $17.50, before settling down slightly to close at $16.70. . In fiscal 2005 annual sales were $69.1 million and in fiscal 2006 were approximately $86 million. Other titles over the years were Costume Express and Storybook Heirlooms catalogs. Mr. Jewell resigned in 2006. Over the past year shares of Celebrate Express have traded between $2.19 and $10.70. On the day the deal with Liberty was first announced shares of Celebrate Express jumped 70%, from $2.30 to $3.90.

Depending upon when you bought stock in Celebrate Express you can celebrate and dance to the music, or put on your Joker costumer.

On a mission or just looking? What’s the difference and why does it matter?

In animated discussions about the role of printed catalogs (or online, digital metaphors), there is something not being said about the fundamental difference between web search and print browsing. In a recent post by Polly on the Directly Speaking blog, a part of the Growth Strategies Group of Belardi/Ostroy, she posits the question “Can web merchandising do the same thing as a well-executed catalog”. I think the fair answer is “not yet.”

The holy grail of cataloging is to eventually and profitably achieve multi-buyer status with prospects (they are prospects for some logical reason). We do this by targeting those “likely to buy” and providing them with the information and exposure to products they most likely wanted as well as those they did not know they wanted. It’s kind of like why we read newspapers. We know we’re generally interested in politics, sports or whatever and turn to those sections of the paper. When we get to that page, we also learn about things we did not expect to see, i.e. related news … and we read it. When I was in the newspaper business we referred to this as “unexpected serendipitous connections“. Merchandising geniuses may not know it, but that’s what they are doing with a well executed catalog.

Wards.com to be auctioned off

DMSI, owner of www.wards.com and other assets of Montgomery Wards (see post from April 2, 2008 “New Life for Montgomery Wards” http://thecatalogchroniclesblog.com/2008/04/02/new-life-for-montgomery-ward/#comments ) will be auctioned off August 5, 2008. Management has not commented on this. Most likely the state of the direct to consumer market, general state of the economy and competition from other online retailers has driven the nail into the proverbial coffin this time.

The J. Peterman Mystique

One of the more famous catalogs is the J. Peterman catalog. Nearly dead, Peterman got a boost from Seinfeld a few years ago (the famous J. Peterman coat appeared) and is now a vibrant niche catalog and multichannel retailer again. The catalog is famous for two reasons: 1) The J. Peterman Coat (below).

The J. Peterman Coat

Classic horseman’s duster protects you, your rump, your saddle and your legs down to your ankles.
Because it’s cut very long to do the job, it’s unintentionally very flattering. With or without a horse.
Although I live in horse country, I wear this coat for other reasons. Because they don’t make Duesenbergs anymore.

2) Copy writing that tells such a story in so few words that it makes you want to buy it, to become what the product portends! The copy is so good that middle school teacher Dena Harrison engages her students with writing assignments modeled on the J.Peterman catalog. See her talk about J. Peterman on YouTube.

J. Peterman also has a blog which builds on the mystique of this individual and the personality of the company, Petermanseye (http://www.petermanseye.com) Peterman’s goal is to build a marketplace for ideas. He says, “A place where we can educate, entertain and discuss with each other topics we find interesting. “ A man after my own heart.

Brookstone Cuts Catalog Circulation

The catalog news coming out of the Brookstone Q2 conference call today, July 25, 2008 is that the company will be reducing its second half, 2008 catalog circulation by roughly 5% compared to the second half, 2007 volume.  My experience has been that if you increase circulation and sales don’t go up, that’s not the result you were looking for.

Besides reduced circulation, catalog cost reductions will take the form of a decrease in weight (trim and pages) and an increase in product density (pages).  Looking backward, direct marketing revenue was down 3.8% on a circulation increase of 23% for the prior 13 weeks and up 9.7% on a circulation increase of 37% for the 26 week period, both ending June 28.  This, along with a lower average catalog order value, similar to the decrease in retail store AOV, and The Sharper Image going-out-of-business events, especially in malls where the two stores competed, resulted in a Q2 loss of ($8.6 million) compared to Q2 2007 loss of ($6.4 million).

The webcast can be heard by registering at

http://www.ir.brookstone.com/pages/conference.html