THINK PICKING OUT the right accessories for an outfit is tough? Try choosing the right accessory to launch your mail order company.
That’s what Jim Breakell, president of silver and gold jewelry cataloger J.H. Breakell & Co., had to do when he designed his first print advertisements.
Breakell began his career in the early 1970s as a metalsmith, making silver cups and bowls. His first retail experience was a partnership with a couple of goldsmiths at a shop/studio on Bowen’s Wharf in Newport, RI. He then moved on to doing wholesale and commissioned work, and spent some time as a designer at Trafalgar Ltd., creating hardware for accessories like belts, bags and shoes. When that job ended, he couldn’t find similar work in the Providence, RI area so in 1985 he decided to try his hand at mail order, using his home as both a workshop and business headquarters.
Today the company has a thriving retail operation on a quaint Newport side street, and expects to circulate 732,000 catalogs this holiday season. About a third of J.H. Breakell’s direct orders are coming in online.
Breakell talked with Direct recently about how the company used print to get a start in direct marketing, why it turned away from the medium, and how it might go back.
DIRECT: Did you have any experience in mail order when you started the company?
BREAKELL: No. I had made a catalog of sorts when I worked out of a storefront on Bowen’s Wharf in Newport in the early 1970s. We took some photos and made a flier and ran an ad in Boston magazine. It was a little black-and-white thing I had slapped together. It was a complete flop, but it was
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