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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Paulette Jarvey: Success in the Catalog Business

I love catalogs. I love the well crafted ones – the gorgeous pictures, layouts and product backdrops. But I know that creating a catalog is not easy as simply taking a nice picture, but entails a thorough understanding of customers and how they respond to product offerings.

Paulette Jarvey, owner of scrapbooking companies Hot Off the Press and the catalog Paper Wishes, attributes two things to the success of her catalogs: “knowing her customer base very well and providing them with top quality color coordinated products.” Her major challenge initially was “managing and learning the ropes” so she eventually partnered with more experienced crafts cataloger Herrschners to handle fulfillment for her as well as the books’ creative and buying.

In an interview with the Catalog Success magazine, she points the following reasons for her success:

  • Spot trends early – Jarvey was the first to bring scrapbooking to retail, and has capitalized on the Web with her Paper Wishes Weekly Webisodes
  • Share credit – she has a strong team to back her up
  • Product variety – have new and exciting products all the time

She has the following advice to new catalogers:

  • Know your customer and serve them well
  • Grow according to your core competencies, but don’t be limited to them
  • Stop every now and then to look at your business from a strategic perspective

Read full story at Catalog Success magazine (May 2006 issue, page 110)

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