Channel | Direct Marketing | Print

Banta Corp. plans to sell its Danbury, CT direct marketing print plant and close several other facilities.

Lands' End founder Gary C. Comer died on Oct. 4 at his home in Chicago.

J. C. Penney Company Inc. announced that total direct sales for the five weeks ending Sept. 30, 2006 increased 11.8% over the same month last year to $284 million. That compares to a year-over-year increase of only 0.4% in September 2005 and a direct-sales total of $254 million for the month.

Today we meet Michelle Brown, a Boulder, CO-based senior account executive at Walter Karl Inc. Brown was one of the principals with The List Group for six years, but she gave that up to join Walter Karl three years ago. "I had to run operations but I wanted work more closely with clients," said Brown.

The U.S. Postal Service posted net income before escrow allocation of $1.28 billion for the nine months ended Aug. 31, off $28.5 million from net income of $1.5 billion for the same period last year. However, after escrow allocation, the USPS was in the red by $1.46 billion.

The federal government plans to stop its crackdown on discount drugs mailed from Canadian pharmacies to U.S. customers, according to wire service reports.

Cenveo Inc. made a late-Tuesday offer of $50 per share for all of the stock of printer Banta Corp. The offer came after Banta rejected an unsolicited bid from Cenveo, under which Cenveo would acquire Banta for $47 per share, early Tuesday morning.

A lawsuit filed by a long-time anti-spammer against Scott Richter and his e-mail marketing firm OptInRealBig accuses Richter and his clients of using deceptive subject lines. However, if the California court agrees that all of the subject lines detailed in the suit are deceptive, some fairly standard direct-marketing teaser-copywriting techniques could be legal landmines in…

Direct marketing services firm MetroGroup has acquired Proficient Data, a transaction document management, production and mailing services company. The acquisition terms were not disclosed.

QuadData Solutions, a printing company based in Sussex, WI, has expanded its data-driven marketing service. In addition, the data solutions group, formerly known as Quad/Data Services, has enhanced its list rental capabilities through relationships with a number of well-known, well- respected data providers like InfoUSA/Donnelley Marketing and Advo, Inc.