November Catalogue Log

Christmas is coming and with it a rush of Christmas catalogues. In November we received and logged 167 catalogues, up 19.3 percent on last year’s 140 catalogues, and up 34.7 percent on November 2008, when we tracked 124 catalogues.

As volume increased, the number of special offers decreased. In November, we noted that just 46 of the catalogues we received, or 27.5 percent, promoted a discount or sale on the cover. This represents the lowest percentage of catalogues offering a special price promotion recorded in 2010. In fact, it’s the lowest percentage recorded since we began compiling the Catalogue Log back in late 2008. Up until now, April 2010 held the record for lowest percentage of sales and discounts, with 29.2 percent.

Clearly, cataloguers are watching their margins; sales and discounts were not the only promotion to decline during November. The number of catalogues promoting a free gift was also at its lowest for 2010, with just 8.4 percent, or 14 catalogues doing so. My favourite free gift promotion was from cosmetics retailer L’Occitane, which offered a goodie bag worth £25 with purchases of £35 or more.

Cataloguers were also shifting away from free shipping, with just 18 percent of front covers promoting free p&p. Among those offering free delivery, most opted for setting a spend threshold. Gifts marketer Aspen & Brown set quite a low threshold of £20, whilst craft supplies catalogue Baker Ross required customers to spend £75 online in order to qualify for free shipping.

Overall, more than half, 53.3 percent, of the catalogues we received last month did not promote any sort of special offer on the cover. Instead of special offers, some catalogues such as Lakeland, made customers aware of last order deadlines. Classicalia, the new brand from gifts cataloguer Nauticalia, opted for using the cover to highlight some of the products within, possibly to establish its range for new customers. Toys and games cataloguer/retailer Hawkin’s Bazaar, the self-proclaimed “Suppliers to Father Christmas since 1973”, went for a picture of a retro-looking, blast-of-colour snow globe full of toys on the cover. Toning it down for Christmas was homewares and gifts cataloguer Cox & Cox, which decided on a simple image of a mince pie tower and cocktail stick decorations.--MT

Gifts I don’t get

Having a robust imagination, I can empathise with the intent of just about any Christmas gift. Those cheesy kitchen aprons designed to look as if the wearer is revealing his six-pack and just about everything else? Yeah, I guess someone, somewhere finds them funny. Loo seats decorated with “humorous” cartoons and poetry about game hunting? Well, the loo is a popular place to catch up on one’s reading.

A few of the items I spotted in Christmas catalogues recently, though, had me shaking my head and wondering who the hell would buy them—and who the hell would they be intended for?

Take the Monkey Nail Dryer from Hawkin’s Bazaar.

Hawkin’s has a host of brilliantly off-kilter gifts: Crime Scene Loo Roll; the Giant Wine Glass, which holds an entire bottle of vino; the Incredible Expanding Bunny (I can’t begin to explain it). But the Monkey Nail Dryer is, to my mind, just bizarre. I can accept that some people might feel the need to hasten the drying speed of their manicure with an air blower. But why is it in the shape of a cartoon monkey? I just don’t get it.

Then there’s the Furrari dog bed from Pets at Home:

I love dogs. I especially love my dog. But my dog is not going to have a swankier vehicle, plush or otherwise, than I do.

Gifts for the Girls sells Onion Goggles. These aren’t a gag gift, not at £14.99 and with a “comfortable foam seal” and “anti-fog lenses [for] maximum clarity”. But you’d need to chop an incredible amount of onions to justify the expense. Besides, who really wants to receive a gift whose sole purpose is to make it moderately less uncomfortable to carry out a tedious task?


Which sort of brings me to the Tweeze battery-operated tweezer from the Original Gift Company. I’m not saying this isn’t a great product; according to the copy, “it’s estimated to be 30x faster than ordinary tweezing” and is “ideal for facial hair on upper lip, chin and cheek areas”. But woe betide the man who presumes to surprise his honey with an implement for removing her moustache.

When it comes to truly naff gifts, the British have nothing on the Americans. Case in point, from the US catalogue Things You Never Knew Existed: Jingle Jugs.

From the product copy: “This anatomically correct mounted pair performs to the hit song ‘Titties and Beer’ by Rodney Carrington. Molded in soft vinyl with real bikini top! Mount these jiggly jugs on the wall or use the included display stand.”

And people wonder why I left the States for England.--SC

The customer's voice

Here's a great example of a business that really appears to value its customers and their opinions. Yesterday, toys and novelties cataloguer/retailer Hawkin's Bazaar posted on Twitter that it was seeking contributions to update the introductory text on its website home page.

By asking customers to describe Hawkin's Bazaar in their own words, it will see exactly how the business is viewed through consumers' eyes--the adjectives they use, any recurring themes in their descriptions, how they would sum up the business in a paragraph, and so on. The insight garnered from this could be just as valuable as information obtained during a monitored focus group.

What I particularly admire about this tactic is that even if Hawkin's Bazaar doesn't end up using customer-generated copy, it was brave enough to ask for it--and via an unmoderated medium!
Let's hope it doesn't go the same way as a recent Neal's Yard Remedies Q&A in the Guardian.--MT