For a generation or two, J. Peterman was a catalog. Or a character on Seinfeld. But for many people, probably neither.
As a very infrequent customer and more often a Seinfeld fan, I had mixed feelings when I heard about the closing of the iconic catalog company a couple weeks ago. J. Peterman built a distinctive brand around unusual merchandise, evocative illustrations, and exquisite descriptions that made a pair of pants or a jacket seem like something you might discover on an adventure somewhere exotic. You know, like the dashing character with the same name on the TV show. By the way, the actor who played him helped bring the company back from the dead a few years ago.
Well, anyway, it worked. For a long time. But brands, customers, and markets don’t stand still. Eventually the math catches up with you.
So I reached out to Paul Miller, Executive VP & Managing Director of ACMA (American Commerce Marketing Association). I asked him about one of the biggest challenges facing established catalog brands: Can you change the merchandise mix without changing the identity of the brand?
His answer: “Brands can change their product mix and still have the same identity though it varies by brand, changing customer mores, tastes, trends in a particular product category, competitors’ offerings, etc.”
This made a lot of sense to me.
Change doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the brand. As Miller said, “Some brands have made drastic changes to their merchandise and sales have plunged; others have made tweaks here and there [and] have benefited.”
The trick is knowing which changes your customers will embrace, and which ones will make them wonder what happened.
This is where you have to do some “astute number-crunching,” as Miller put it.
Read this full article on Printing Impressions, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
