Funky Catalog Formats That Work: Katie Muldoon

Catalogs with attention-getting formats have been reaching my mailbox with increasing frequency. Everything from teeny books to giant ones, multi-stepped pages to fancy bind-ins have been helping to reinforce these catalogs’ positioning while actually getting them opened.

Clever designs all, but wise marketers know that the design should always start with the printer, else you can wind up with an inefficient, needlessly expensive catalog. Hence I picked up the phone and called my local R.R. Donnelley rep, Bob Hovan.

Over lunch, I dumped about 40 catalogs almost on his plate, asking for the hows and whys behind them. Here’s what we discussed.

Such unusual formats can be anywhere from really expensive to easy on the budget. A decision on format starts in planning and is influenced by the book’s positioning. One of the reasons that printers are merging is that they need to offer customers the increasing variety of “parts” needed to create format alternatives. This means that sometimes these parts will be printed and bound at different plants. While printers are blessed for giving us options critical to developing unique designs and addressing postal concerns, be sure to talk to your printer about what this means in freight costs and potential mishaps in coordination.

One funky format was something of a surprise, Godiva’s simple 7-inch by 10-1/2-inch 28-pager. But a quick flip to the middle revealed a tipped-in, purse-size (5-inch by 6-1/2-inch) 16-page supplement affixed with a glue strip. Almost certainly printed separately and placed in the book later in production, this “extra” needn’t be as cumbersome as it seems, as long as it’s been prearranged with the printer. It’s a relatively inexpensive method of creating both a standout catalog and a mini that your customers can take with them…a smart idea for a company like Godiva, which has stores almost everywhere.

Home Depot used a similar sized (6-inch by 10-7/8-inch) approach. Because it’s press-pasted online, it’s cheap and can be bound into a magazine without fear of slowing things down at the bindery. Further, it can serve double duty as a self-mailer, which is what Home Depot did. The piece itself was a self-sealed 24-pager, a truly economical format. Since the piece is sealed and sized for postal trays, it gets the low automated postage rate.

Another funky format biggie has been an increase in perfect-bound consumer catalogs. Perfect bounds, with their fat spines, have long been popular in B-to-B circles because business marketers know a spine sporting the company’s name and phone number increases a catalog’s chances of winding up on a customer’s bookshelf or desk.

First, forget the common idea that you have to have billions of pages to publish a catalog with a spine. Nordstrom’s 56-pager proves this a fallacy. The actual number of pages needed depends on the weight of the paper, but in general, a perfect-bound catalog’s spine can be as slim as an eighth of an inch.

Perfect binding is a bit more expensive than staple binding, but it has other advantages. Because you “build” a perfect-bound catalog differently than a stapled one, you can add pages at the last minute. Inserting bind-ins is easier and you can design really, really different catalogs, such as the stepped-page version from Bloomingdale’s.

In this catalog, each of five sections was about five-eighths of an inch wider than the one on top of it. Essentially, five different-sized catalogs were stacked on top of each other to create a book that allowed you to instantly flip through such sections as “Chef’s Kitchen” or “Dining Elegance.”

As you would expect, though, postage for such a book is steep. Understand in the concept stage what the postal implications are. If you’re looking to mail an unusual piece, get permission in writing from someone at the U.S. Postal Service who is authorized to set postal rates. Bloomie’s appears to have sent this catalog just to its “premier members”; such selective mailings are what first-rate database marketing is all about.

Another perfect-bound beauty was the BCBG Max Azria catalog. This seriously expensive teaser came in a to-die-for paper envelope. The black catalog was a slim 9 inches by 4 inches, also on deliciously elegant paper, and right for pocket or purse. With nary a price in sight, it was clearly an image builder and traffic generator, and its size, paper and binding did just that.

Moving to the other side of the spectrum were some very press-friendly little pieces, such as Ross-Simons’ 6-inch by 7-1/4-inch 98-pager and Fitigues’ 24-page, oblong 8-inch by 5-1/4-inch book. Both made memorable statements while still very effectively using paper and printer. Printed two or three up on a press sheet, these tiny sizes are very yield-efficient.

As Bob Hovan points out, “[These small books] deliver a low cost per household reached because they use half or better of the paper of a more standard catalog. Format efficiency equals a better price. When working with a printer, always understand the head-to-foot dimension cutoff of a press so you don’t waste paper.”

Bloomies was the king of funky formats this past year, with the only oversized catalog at 10-1/2 inches by 15-5/8 inches. It was packed with detail-rich photos. But remember, any book this size is another postal alert, so check postage costs with the USPS before designing. Another Bloomie’s home décor book boasted bar-coded coupons on a gatefold front cover.

Extra wraps, such as seen on Chef’s Choice and Eddie Bauer, help get extra mileage out of already-printed catalogs and cost the same as a separate cover. If you’re planning a wrap, the most cost-efficient method is to have the original catalog as a self-cover. Then you can just slip the wrap on and send the book to certain segments of your mailing.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. To learn more, talk to your printer today!

KATIE MULDOON is president of DM/catalog consulting firm Muldoon & Baer Inc., Tequesta, FL.