How Do You Clear Out a Room Full of Catalogers?
Monica Smith’s answer: start a session about Twitter. Yes, it was an ice-breaking one-liner by Marketsmith’s president and CEO to open her session today at NEMOA. And really, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
Even before Catalog Age was rebranded as Multichannel Merchant, we were telling our readers that they need to be in more than one channel. But many of the old-school catalogers are still relying on their books to drive business.
I had a theory recently that some of these old-school catalogers were sitting at their desks during the holiday season, buying gifts on Amazon.com or some other giant pure-play. But Millard Group Senior VP Bill LaPierre blew that out the window with a simple question during his session today.
“How many of you have never bought from eBay?”
And it was about half the attendees. Which tells me that if half the people in the room full of catalogers have never bought from eBay, then Smith’s Twitter joke may have gone over their heads.
Catalogers can no longer think like catalogers. They are merchants, and they can’t just be in many different sales channels, they need to be where their customers are, and be able to relate with their customers in whatever space that may be.
NEMOA continues tomorrow up at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel, and I’ll be posting some articles to Multichannel Merchant, and maybe some more observations here.
