F. Curtis Barry & Company’s Multichannel Operations & Fulfillment Blog

At Merit Direct’s annual co-op last week, customer service expert and Happiness Coach JoAnna Brandi delivered an inspiring speech—one that I feel more of us should learn from, as it would lead to higher levels of productivity, retention and overall fulfillment for our companies. I know what you’re thinking: “Hold on there! ‘Happiness Coach’? Are […]

Washington, DC June 27, 2008. Ammerican Catalog Mailers Association’s (ACMA) National Catalog Advocacy and Strategy Forum.
Hamilton Davidson, Executive Director, and the Board of ACMA) put together an absolutely effective event for catalogers to have a dialogue with to USPS, Congressional staff, Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) officials and other catalog management.
In a straight forward way […]

That was one of the questions futurist Don Libey (www.libey.com) posed to the audience during his presentation at the last VendorNet user conference. You may say that’s absurd! But fuel has already doubled in the past couple of years. Why should those who control the cost of oil give Americans a break?
Libey, who is known […]

We want to remind you once again about a very important event, taking place in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, June 26 and Friday, June 27. The American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) has organized a groundbreaking forum that will bring together key officials of the U.S. Postal Service, the Postal Regulatory Commission and members of Congress […]

Save the Date:
National Catalog Advocacy & Strategy Forum
June 26-27, 2008
Washington, D.C.
The American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) has been engaged in continuing important discussions on how we can address the current state of affairs in the catalog industry with the USPS, and has been making progress on a number of fronts. These will be covered at […]

It has been seven weeks since BlueSky Brands shut down operations, stranding a number of catalog and e-commerce businesses. Now we’ve received an e-mail that the National Wildlife Federation sent to customers who have purchased items directly from the Federation.
Here’s what the e-mail said:
“There are still many opportunities to receive great wildlife and nature-themed merchandise […]

At our recent Executive Forum we talked about how rising postage costs, increasing paper costs and the fall off in prospecting response rates have radically changed the traditional catalog business model. While there are large, efficient catalogs that spend in the high 20-percents on the total cost to create and mail catalogs, many businesses are […]

The Wall Street Journal (April 21, 2008, B1) detailed a strategy by Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren to localize store assortments to cater to what shoppers are more interested in buying. This localization—called “My Macy’s”—will for now will be only 15% of the total SKUs, which range from 1.5 million to 4 million, depending on store […]

Two-thirds of the 52 economists interviewed by USA Today in their quarterly survey say the U.S. is now in a recession. Add to that those surveyed who believe we will be in a recession soon, and the number reaches 79%. If there is any lightheartedness in this tough business climate, it is when people joke […]

I just heard from one of our gift and hard good direct clients—one in a series of messages like this I’ve had lately. This latest is that their Chinese producers failed to deliver on goods, costing this small catalog $100,000 in sales even though they had purchase orders in and accepted with confirmed delivery dates.
Another […]