ACCM Attendance: The show had about 500-700 attendees from what I could tell.  Like many of the shows we have attended this year the number of attendance looked to be down 50% to 80% from prior years.  Penton took a bath on both NCOF and ACCM this year.  There is a question in my mind about the viability of two independent shows; I know they are two different audiences.

I will say that those who attended appeared to be decision makers.  In my speech on dashboards and KPIs more than 75% of the attendees were new to ACCM. Interesting mix of e-commerce and multichannel managers.  If you would like a copy of my PowerPoints, e-mail me at cbarry@fcbco.com.

Companies’ Results: As someone said to me, “The new standard is to be only 10% off plan.”  I met many where sales were off more than that even when plan wasn’t very aggressive.  Companies with unique product offerings are doing far better than companies with stock or open market product.  Jack Rosenfeld, Chairman, Potpourri Collection and Sheryl Clark, President, Boston Proper, during the Monday luncheon panel both emphasized the importance of this.  And they cited that their apparel businesses were doing well because they were tuned into the customer.

I did meet a number of niche businesses that seemed to be doing better than the average.  They struck me as having unique product niche’s and unique marketing approaches.  One of them has grown to $200 million in sales in 2008 from being a start up in 2000!  What’s interesting to me is that they aren’t catalog or category merchants.  They opportunistically market products that they think will sell – they don’t try to fit it under an existing title. They also test product and don’t buy product initially.  We can be critical of the customer service/inventory approach but it’s interesting in terms of sales growth and profitability.

Leisure and hobby product companies seemed to be holding their own.

While there are many companies which are losing money, there were comments about people being surprised that more haven’t shut down already.

Many people expressed increased optimism with the improved stock market of the last 5 weeks.  I think it’s really important for the leadership of this industry to remain optimistic.  Without hope we don’t have anything.  Some days I know it’s tough.

One of the largest business to business list brokers told me that many of their clients were doing OK (meaning flat to down 5%) until this past month when business declined further.  No idea why last month was out of the norm with the trend.

Prospecting: Many companies are excited about the possibilities of the USPS “summer sale” on postage.  My hat’s off to American Catalog Mailer’s Association (ACMA) for the work they have done with the USPS to help them understand the effects the postage increases have negatively had on our industry. Since July 2007 the ACMA estimates catalog mail volume is down 35%. The year-to-date net loss is $2.5 billion for the USPS compared to LY’s $35 million loss. To learn more about what the ACMA is doing for catalog businesses or to join this great association, please visit ACMA’s website, www.catalogmailers.org

Holiday 2009: Companies seem to be delaying Holiday mailing plans to see a few more “economic tea leaves”.  Paper and printing seems to be available.  It’ll be interesting to see how circulation plans pan up.

Measuring E-commerce promotional response: As we work with clients on our co-developed dashboard and analytical software product (with Taurus Software, Manage Metrix, managemetrix.com), we don’t see companies being very analytical about measuring E-commerce promotional breakeven.  Companies are not measuring the profitability of the promotions.  I asked this question in a number of ACCM sessions.  No one seems to have been motivated to doing this.  In my opinion, this should be a priority given that e-commerce marketing is 2% to 15% in our client companies on top of the catalog marketing costs of 25% to 35% of net sales.

That’s my take on ACCM 2009.  Did you go?  What’s happening in your world?

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