My first thought on opening the 2009-2010 catalogue from DZD was “Why are there coffee-cup stains and doodles all over the cover?”. My second thought was “What is DZD?”. The answer to neither was forthcoming. Page 2, where you’d normally expect to find an introduction to the catalogue and its wares, looked like the inside page of a library book complete with date stamps (almost made me wonder whether I really did need to return the catalogue by 9th April 2014). Meanwhile, page 3 was simply a photo of twigs with the words “Trend: Nature” written at the top left.
Flicking through, it became clear that this was a business-to-business catalogue, but only after visiting the website did I work out exactly what DZD did. Turns out it sells visual merchandising products—decorations, retail displays, and the like. It has some nice stuff too, but this is buried within a catalogue that has no index or table of contents.
It almost seemed as though the DZD catalogue has some pages missing—the pages that are supposed to explain why I should deck my store using its products. In other words, the pages that sell the company and its USP. Here’s what I would have liked to see on the opening three pages instead:
- a cover with a strapline to explain what the business does. Adapted from its website, something like “the only visual merchandising resource you need” would do.
- a letter from the managing director on page 2 to introduce the season’s new trends and highlight any special offers or new arrivals
- a table of contents
- how to order info and details on the DZD showroom (currently on the inside back cover)
If the DZD team is reading this and taking notes, I’d be interested to see next year’s catalogue. If you’d like, we could put to it to one of our experts for a free critique in a future issue of Catalogue e-business.
And by the way, I still don’t know what the doodles on the cover have to do with anything, so if someone could enlighten me, please do.—MT
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