February 2005 should have marked the start of a fantastic year for Jazzology, the nation’s oldest extant independent jazz label. The 56-year-old company had just published its first catalog in four years, a 160-page monster so heavy it couldn’t be used as a prospecting tool. (It’s included in customers’ orders.) Jazzbeat, the company’s quarterly magazine, was well into its 15th year of publication. And the run-up to the New Orleans Mardi Gras and Jazzfest celebrations had heightened interest in the traditional jazz recordings that are the firm’s bread and butter.
Jazzology’s 2005 catalog (left), and Volume 16 Nos. 3 & 4 (combined into one issue) of Jazzbeat magazine.
In late August, all the momentum the company had built up came to a halt. “The hurricane put a stop to us,” said George H. Buck Jr., the company’s founder. “We were about ready to do a new [issue of Jazzbeat] and that was when the hurricane hit. So we didn’t get it out until some time in October, which delayed everything. Our anniversary issue, which was due in the middle of October, we’re not getting that out until the middle of March 2006. Our printing company was flooded.”
Unlike other New Orleans-based direct marketers, Jazzology has continued to rely on the U.S. Postal Service, despite the main postal processing office in the city having yet to reopen. Before Katrina, the USPS picked up the company’s packages from its office two or three times a week. Now, twice a week, office manager Houcine Harrabi brings 40 to 50 orders, including sales both to individuals as well as distributors, to a post office in Metarie, LA, nearly 10 miles from Jazzology’s French Quarter location.
Jazzology’s founder George H. Buck Jr.(left), and office manager Houcine Harrabi (right).
Fortunately, Jazzology’s customers live throughout the United States, which means that a good chunk of what the company sends out ultimately can reach its intended recipients. Of the magazine’s 9,000 subscribers, only 159 live in the ZIP codes to which the U.S.P.S. has been flat-out refusing to send periodicals. But those customers that were able to receive the new issue and realize that Jazzology was still functioning responded with orders.
When a new issue of Jazzbeat comes out, the number of packages the company mails out typically spikes to between 150 and 200 packages two or three times a week. “Right now it’s very slow because the last issue was out in October,” Buck said. It’s supposed to be every three months. It’ll be about six months before the next issue comes out. Right now we’re at the low point.”
Jazzology’s George H. Buck Jr.
The sporadic incoming mail service hasn’t helped, either. The company does have a Web site (http://www.jazzology.com), but still receives a fair amount of business through the mail. Sixty percent of the orders generated by a new issue of Jazzology come via traditional mail. But this may be shifting: Mardi Gras gave to a boost to its Web site: According to Harrabi, media coverage before and during Mardi Gras which featured local jazz generated “tons” of orders in a two-day period.
“First class mail has been very, very poor,” says Buck. “We get one delivery today, and the next three or four days, no deliveries. But that’s improved a little bit, because in the beginning we weren’t getting anything by mail. We were lucky to get one delivery every two weeks. And, of course, they aren’t delivering magazines. So although our magazine has been received by people in California and so forth, it has not been received by people here in New Orleans.”
This article is part of a weeklong series Direct Newsline is featuring on direct marketing and the economic recovery of New Orleans.
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