Hello, I’m the Lonely MCM Awards Guy

I’m the lonely MCM Awards guy, and I’m waiting for your entries. I kind of feel like Charlie Brown, camped out at the mail box, hoping the Little Red-Haired Girl will send him a Valentine.

Maybe I’m just being wishy-washy. I know there were a lot of great catalogs and e-commerce sites that are worthy of getting Gold or Silver in the 2010 MCM Awards. And I’m sure those merchants are just waiting until the last minute to get their entries done.

Some merchants be afraid to enter, thinking they will have to compete against titans like Orvis, L.L. Bean and Harry & David. But we made some changes in categories that we hope help the Daveys of multichannel retail compete with the Goliaths.

Some merchants may think that if their sales were down in 2009, that they can’t compete for the top prizes. Not true. Sure, we ask for financial information on the entry form (and keep those confidential – all our judges sign non-disclosure agreements and have kept secrets for more than two decades now). But it’s more than just the net revenue in 2009: Some merchants made vast improvements to the catalog to encourage shopping, others added social media and other customer service elements to retain its customer base.

And even if your sales were down in 2009, so what? Your entry in the MCM Awards also means you’ll get a valuable critique from some of the brightest minds in the industry, and their guidance could get you on your way to multichannel success in 2010.

So don’t wait until the very, very, very last second. Get your entries in so I don’t have to sit in the snow, under the mail box, like a blockhead.