Former Fingerhut DB Execs Form DM Services Company

Five former database marketing executives at the now-defunct Fingerhut catalog have formed database marketing services company Decision Intelligence Inc. (DII).

The company, based in Minneapolis, MN, offers a variety of services including data development, customer profiling, product affinity, predictive modeling, customer segmentation and targeted marketing. It hopes to expand beyond these areas to offer other services in the future.

Randy Erdahl, Bill Flach, Deb Campbell, Colleen Theisen and Matt Redlon founded DII. The group have used their many contacts, made during years of service with Fingerhut, to pitch their services to about 12 catalogers and retailers. “We expect to announce a client any day now,” Erdahl said.

“We’ve had great success as an analytical group at Fingerhut, and we thought this was a good way to keep us together,” Flach added. “We can now take the laboratory of core competencies that we’ve built up over the years at Fingerhut and extend them to others in the database marketing arena.”

At Fingerhut, Erdahl, a 22-year veteran of the company, was director of business intelligence. Flach, a 17-year veteran, was CIO of database marketing. Deb Campbell, a 17-year employee, was a group manager of the department as was Colleen Theisen, who worked for the firm for 15 years. Redlon, an analyst with the department, had been with Fingerhut for two years.

All five were terminated on April 5.

Parent Federated Department Stores Inc. announced in January that it would liquidate Fingerhut Cos. Soon after employees began receiving layoff notices.