A Real Page-Turner

Despite the oft-heard claim that “print is dead,” a variety of retailers have chosen innovative paths to breathe new life into the pages of the company catalog. Rather than merely a vehicle for sales, they see catalogs as essential tools for company branding.

Consider furniture and accessory powerhouse IKEA: The company has unveiled a 376-page 2012 catalog, complete with an iPad app featuring videos that bring the pages to life and a related microsite with blogs and consumer-submitted photos and design ideas.

“The idea with IKEA is that the consumer is really involved in the process,” says Christine Whitehawk, external communications manager for IKEA North America. “We do a little, and the consumer does a little.”

The whole shopping process is “very interactive,” she says. “We’re trying to be in the places that consumers are, and to provide them with the tools that they want right now. So many of them are in this digital space, and they’ve let us know how they want to experience the brand.”

The visual and tactile experience
One-third of U.S. adults are expected to have tablets by 2015, but retailers already report that tablet devices “are taking significant share of ‘mobile transactions,’ even with the device’s limited adoption,” says Forrester Research’s recent “Why Tablet Commerce May Soon Trump Mobile Commerce.” Surveyed retailers reported, on average, “21 percent of their mobile traffic comes from tablets, with several companies anecdotally reporting figures north of 50 percent.”

“Shopping on a tablet is more recreational,” says Siva Kumar, founder of shopping search engine TheFind. “It’s a visual and tactile experience that is more pleasing than typical online shopping … On the tablet, you’re leisurely flipping through pages of lifestyle images with the ability to quickly and more closely examine the products that catch your eye.”

TheFind introduced Catalogue for the iPad and Android tablets in May. Much like TheFind, Catalogue is an aggregator that allows consumers to compare goods from retailers like Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom and Sephora, but in a way that’s more “discovery” than search.

Sephora has been involved with TheFind for “many years,” says Bridget Dolan, Sephora’s vice president of interactive media. The company chose not only to sign up for the Catalogue app, but also to develop its own tablet app for iPad — complete with a “Virtual Mirror” component that turns the device into half mirror and half video player for following along with demonstrations. The Sephora app for iPad, released on July 21, ranked No. 4 spot among all free apps within its first week.

“Beauty is a very visual business and the iPad’s functionality is the perfect vehicle for the photography, videos and other assets that we already create,” Dolan says, “so we think it’s the perfect complement to our image.”

Being ‘pleasantly surprised’
Granted, TheFind is not the only option available. Catalog Spree was introduced by Padopolis in April. Touting itself as “a very different experience” from that offered by competitors, it had 10 million views within five weeks.

“Catalogs are the third-largest publication industry in the United States,” says Padopolis CEO Joaquin Ruiz. “Last year, there were 20 billion catalogs shipped. That number has gone up when all other publications have gone down.”

Glenn Edelman, vice president of e-commerce for wine accessory, gift and cellar retailer Wine Enthusiast, was excited to give Catalog Spree a shot. The first book went out in mid-June, he says, “and we’ve been pleasantly surprised with the amount of traffic we’re seeing from it. It’s ended up being a great new customer generator for us.... Being part of this network, we’re getting access to all other catalogers, and I’m sure our audience is discovering other catalogs, too.”

Founded in 1979, Wine Enthusiast has seen a change in the way customers use its catalogs — and the catalogs have responded in turn.

“Many years ago, we’d send catalogs out, and people would pick up the phone and call us,” Edelman says. “But now, obviously, we see a large percentage of our customers going to the web. … So we don’t necessarily need to put every bit of information about a product in the catalog. … We can now use more catalog space for nice, pretty pictures.”

Those “nice, pretty pictures” are appearing more often. “It’s more, ‘Here’s how the whole room is going to look,’ rather than trying to cram every item on a page,” says Melissa Dowling, editor-in-chief of Multichannel Merchant, which covers all aspects of marketing through catalogs, retail and online channels.

An end in sight?
Dowling — whose publication has been honoring the best catalogs with the MCM awards for more than 25 years — has noticed numerous other trends.

First, there’s an increasing amount of user-generated content both on- and offline.
“This is specifically related to ratings and reviews,” she says. “They’ve become a huge part of the way people shop.” In terms of print catalogs, that might mean including snippets of reviews, driving people online to read more.

Retailers are also reducing their catalog mailings — that’s where Catalogs.com comes in. The site operates on the idea that conversion to sale is higher if a catalog is in the hands of someone who specifically requested it. Catalogs.com recently began building tablet- and PC-based catalogs for retailers via its data feeds.

“We can build categories, we can build wish lists, we can add as many products to a catalog as the merchant wants,” says Catalogs.com co-founder Richard Linevsky. “And the retailer can change their catalog any time they want to change it. It’s designed to look like a print catalog, but the functionality is far superior and the speed [is] much faster than any online PDF version.”

Despite the trends toward tablets and interactivity, most experts don’t see an end to print catalogs. High-end furniture, bed and bath retailer Restoration Hardware’s fall 2011 catalog is 616 pages – the largest in company history. The size is considered to be in line with the rapid elevation of the brand’s profile in recent years and coincides with a recent Restoration Hardware App for iPads.

With hundreds of emotion-evoking photos to browse at leisure, combined with portability and interactivity, catalogs from Restoration Hardware and the like may still be hitting a home run.

“I believe catalogs will always have a unique and effective role,” Linevsky says. “They’re like other specific advertising mediums. Why do we still have billboards? Because people are still driving.

“There will always be a place for print, too,” he says. “It serves a purpose as a way to connect to customers when they are not online. Not everybody is hooked in electronically all the time. Not everyone wants to be.”