How to buy things that aren't going anywhere

Some brands are returning to printing catalogs for conditional sales.

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22 November 2024 18:09

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J.Crew has 2.7 million followers on Instagram and more than 300,000 on X, but as of this fall, Announced that it’s trying to reach its target customers the old-fashioned way: by reviving print catalogs. By 2024, everyone is shopping online. But in the past few years Some retailers have returned to their catalogs in an attempt to capture the attention of shoppers a little more. People can scroll through endless amounts of marketing emails and digital ads on their phones. But it’s harder to completely ignore the catalog that appears on your phone or in your mailbox. Simply put, you have to pick it up. Even if you plan to throw it in the recycling bin. and various brands Hopefully you’ll flip through the glossy photos along the way.

The catalog’s heyday predated the financial crisis. But the catalog never completely disappeared. And since then Various catalogs Billions of items are sent to American consumers every year. The 2024 catalogue, in part, is a tribute to those who grew up with this trend. It is typically sent to a list of potential customers who have purchased with the brand in the past or are considered reliable prospective buyers. Some retailers continue to maintain what they have always done. Neiman Marcus, for example, continues to carry catalogs. Even though some affiliates have already stopped. Both traditional and digital companies use catalogs: Amazon has been releasing toy catalogs since 2018, and brands are starting to play with the format as well. Taking the concept beyond a simple product list, Patagonia curates a catalog that phone It’s a “bona fide journal” with “stories and photos” from contributors. Many of these catalogs don’t even have information about prices. Buyers have to go to the website for that.

Amanda Mall wrote atlantic ocean The early 2020s marked a new golden age for catalogs, with brands at the time “more desperate to find ways to sell their stuff without having to be tied to tech giants” since then. The pandemic has only fueled consumers’ overwhelming feelings about online shopping. Buying outright isn’t necessarily the goal. These catalogs aim to build relationships that could lead to future orders, Jonathan Zhang, a marketing professor at Colorado State University, told me. Zhang found that the company’s return on investment was quite good. This is especially true because targeting and measurement have become more complex. This means that brands It won’t take the time to attract people who have never been interested. (This also means less paper is wasted than for free – for all mail days, he noted).

With catalogs, brands are supplementing, not replacing, e-commerce: Zhang’s experiment with e-commerce retailers meet Over a six-month period starting at the end of 2020, people who received both a catalog and marketing email from a retailer made 24 percent more purchases than those who received only email. A J.Crew spokesperson told me that after Catalog relaunch The brand saw a nearly 20 percent increase in reactivated customers, it said, adding that this fall. 11 percent more consumers have a positive impression of the J.Crew brand compared to last year. E-commerce is undeniably central to shopping in 2024, so brands So find creative ways to use manual methods to create success. As I wrote This includes revamping brick-and-mortar stores.

A well-designed catalog may appeal to certain sensory instincts that appeal to avid shoppers. Catalogs work especially well for certain product categories: Zhang says “hedonic” items such as luxury clothing, perfumes, vacation packages, chocolates are among the types of products best suited to printed stories and photography. (I smile when I think of Elaine implementing this type of luxury marketing parody level To limit catalog operations Seinfeld.) Zhang himself was attracted by the campaign. Around February of this year He received a letter from a cruise ship company. (A company he had never dealt with before.) It took him a few minutes to flip through it. in august That’s when he started thinking about planning a winter vacation for his family. He remembered the catalog and visited the company’s website. “A few minutes is long enough for me to encode this information in my memory,” he said. He decided to book the trip.

Catalogs have taken the proper step forward and started 30 years ago, catalogs were the primary way to market products directly to consumers. Then the pendulum swung hard towards online advertising. Now we may start to see more of a balance between the two. Some of us would like to turn our backs on advertising completely. But if brands will find us, printed catalogs might add a little more texture to the commerce experience.

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