(Welcome to Loose Cannon, a staff-written editorial focusing on issues of interest to the direct marketing community. To respond to this week’s editorial via e-mail, please send your message to [email protected].)
Shortly before J.Peterman filed for bankruptcy, its founder, John Peterman, released a statement to the press claiming that weak holiday sales were the result of uncertainly surrounding the (possible) impeachment of President Clinton. As a fiscal observation, it was as quirky and original as some of the copy for which his catalog is known.
Like a story by Saki, Peterman’s copy is known for “romance on short notice.” Whimsy and free-association presents the benefits of products not in your day-to-day life, but in the context of some formal, leisured, vaguely Edwardian, upper class or upper middle class existence. It’s an odd approach to take when most clothing catalog buyers seem to be drawn more to the Gap’s and the new Banana Republic’s aesthetic of casual classics.
Peterman’s precedent for the catalog was the old, still beloved, Banana Republic catalogs. And his rise to national, if not international, renown was becoming a running gag, and then a character, in long-running television sit-com, Seinfeld. Considering that both the catalog and the comedy stopped while they were still peaking, we can not help but wonder if J.Peterman has stayed too long at the fair.
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