By Lillian Vernon

For the past 52 years, Lillian Vernon has consistently offered our customers unique and affordable products with a broad product line including gifts, home décor, gardening, Christmas and children's products. We carved a niche for ourselves by becoming a leader in personalization, a service we have offered free-of-charge and a Lillian Vernon trademark since 1951.

The catalog business is a blend of art and science. The science portion is developing a talent for merchandising which means selecting the right products that appeal to our millions of customers from literally hundreds of thousands of choices we see on buying trips across America and around the world. This includes the skill of negotiating prices with our vendors and setting the right retails for our customers.

The science portion also includes gathering and analyzing a vast amount of information about our customers that become part of our large and ever-changing customer database of 27 million households. This data is a good indicator of what people want to buy, when they want to buy and how much they are willing to spend. Our business is so precise that what may seem like a small difference between a 2.5% and a 2% response rate can mean success or failure. The science also includes the backend of our business - our customer service and fulfillment operations. Our success relies on the well trained and courteous customer service representatives, their ability to answer questions and handle problems and the fast and cost-effective picking, personalization, packing and shipping of our products. Our customers want their orders as fast as possible at the lowest possible cost. Shipping options vary greatly by carrier and geographic region. When you ship 4.8 million packages a year, as Lillian Vernon does, small differences of pennies per package add up.

The art in the equation is the catalog presentation of our products using attention-getting photography that jumps off the page and entices one to buy. It takes art to write effective copy that captures the customer's interest and imagination while informing them at the same time.

Our most important assets are our products, customer database and our fulfillment operation. These are the essential building blocks of a successful direct marketing company.

Lillian Vernon Corporation has had a long journey that has taken it to many heights. The journey started on Lillian Vernon's kitchen table in Mount Vernon, New York with a simple dream to sell a personalized handbag and belt by mail through a small $495 ad in Seventeen Magazine. The 'venture capital' was $2,000 of wedding gift money and from that simple ad a catalog company was born and is known today by over 47 million Americans. How did we get so far? One word - Branding!

For Lillian Vernon, branding means staying focused and true to your niche - consistently offering unique products at the right prices and personalizing them free-of-charge. We have never deviated from our mission to "help our customers live better for less." Anyone starting out today has to make sure they have a clear mission. The current retail environment is too crowded and competitive for a company to succeed any other way.

All companies must mature in order to thrive. It is a necessary fact of business. In order to compete and gain market share, companies have to change the way they do business and grow in different directions. Whatever business you are in, as you grow successful, other companies will want to copy your success. Just as the McDonald's fast food concept spawned Burger King, Wendy's and many other fast food chains, competitors will try to use your business model to their own advantage. Lillian Vernon has led to the start-up of thousands of other catalogs that are successful enterprises in their own right and compete rigorously for our customers. The key to enduring is operating with integrity, staying focused on your vision and most importantly, satisfying your customers.

These days, customer satisfaction comes in many forms. Companies reach different types of customers through many different channels. Since this is the information age, consumers are more knowledgeable than they were in the past and they require more efficient service. They have different needs to fill a multitude of lifestyles and this opens up endless possibilities for companies to expand and grow. For years, Lillian Vernon's channels included our catalogs, business-to-business sales and outlet stores. Today our websites, www.lillianvernon.com and www.ruedefrance.com, are equally as important, representing 30% of our sales and the fastest growing channel of distribution.

The main challenge of running an e-commerce business is driving people to your website when hundreds of thousands of other sites exist. Lillian Vernon's advantage as a multi-channel retailer is that we can advertise our website in the 150 million catalogs we mail to our customers each year. We also advertise our website in our stores and on the millions of boxes we ship to customers.

In the catalog business, we target our offerings to consumers who are responsive to direct mail. For e-commerce to work effectively, we have to get the customer to take action, boot up their computer, make a connection to the Internet and find our website. In addition to creating awareness of our site, we have to be promotional and use incentives to drive traffic there. We use e-mail marketing to reach our customers who opt in to receive these e-mails once a week during our peak season. We also have partnerships with other websites like MSN, one of the largest Internet service providers and shopping portals. The cost of these incentives is covered by the order processing costs we save over processing phone and mail orders.

E-commerce and e-mail marketing will continue to play a crucial role in our business. Fast broadband service is becoming more widespread. Appliances to access the web like PC's, laptops, televisions and telephones will become more universal and less costly. Young people today are very comfortable using the Internet and technology, and they will become the bulk of the buying public in the future.

History has proven that consumer marketplaces change over time. As business people, we must constantly be aware of our changing environment and adapt quickly in order to compete.

Credit:
Lillian Vernon Corporation is a leading 52 year-old national catalog and online retailer that markets gift, housewares, gardening, seasonal, and children's products. We publish seven catalog titles: Lillian Vernon, Rue de France, Christmas Memories, Favorites, Lilly's Kids, Personalized Gifts and a Sales Catalog. The catalogs average 96 pages with over 700 products in each edition. Lillian Vernon is well known for offering unique merchandise with exceptionally good values.

www.lillianvernon.com

Related Information:

NBA Resource Article - Innovating Your Way to Success

NBA Resource Article - 3 Traits for Success

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