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Your company catalog is only as good as the information in it, and these days the more information the better. Getting that information is what often poses the challenge to developing a well-built, usable catalog.
If a catalog doesn't list enough information to help the customer decide which part is right for the job, then the catalog isn't working hard enough. Customers will have to make a call, and your salespeople will have to dig. The sales process becomes a workout itself: fielding calls, combing through binders, faxing spec sheets - hassle. Negotiating the best price available is important, but more and more these days, customers will go wherever it is easiest to get their job done: where they can quickly identify and procure the parts or equipment they need. You can see why the more descriptive attributes listed in your catalog, the better the benefit to your customer and sales team.
Getting Good Content
Getting those attributes, managing that content, is not a task to take lightly. It can be hard work, but according to one distributor who has just finished the task, it's well worth the effort. Jay Donnelley works for Associate Refrigeration Inc. (ARI), a full-service air conditioning, heating and refrigeration wholesale house with five locations in New Jersey and Philadelphia. Donnelly began the process of building ARI's catalog five months ago. He contracted the HARDI Center for Advancing Technology (HARDICAT) service provider, Computer Pundits Corp., to gather the appropriate content for the catalog. Then Donnelly designed the ARI print catalog using Catalog Builder software.
That's how ARI was able to go from no catalog at all to a comprehensive, full-featured catalog-with more than 6,000 part numbers and tens of thousands of attributes, including dimensions, specifications, pricing and pictures-in just a few months. "We accomplished a lot in a short period of time," said Donnelly. "Who knows how long it would have taken if I'd had to go out and get the data myself?"
ARI is not alone in its endeavor. Wholesale distributors across the United States are working to improve their catalogs. Other HARDI members like ACE Supply and Milwaukee Stove have also taken on the challenge of producing their own comprehensive, update-capable catalogs.
Until recently, the cost involved had been a major stumbling block, especially for small and midsize distributors. Outsourcing content management, design and printing is cost-prohibitive to most. That's why the typical HVAC catalog doesn't contain pricing and why printing occurs only every three to four years.
Luckily, that has changed. Today, outside services can provide a reliable source of part numbers and descriptions for filling in the blanks in price books and inventory management systems as well as catalog-ready attributed content.
Few database-driven catalog production software programs can handle all those attributes. So in an effort to make it easier for distributors to create more comprehensive catalogs, HARDICAT partnered with Computer Pundits Corp. of Bloomington, MN, in 2004 to offer an in-house managed approach built on Computer Pundits' Catalog Builder software. Catalog Builder supports an unlimited number of attributes and multiple output mediums and provides a user-friendly catalog design interface.
Taking Control
A number of distributors still outsource the production of their catalogs to catalog design and print shops. The shops compile the data into their own catalog formats and deliver the finished product. The drawback to this hands-off approach is that the distributors pay a hefty production fee every time they go to print.
"Now we have an active database.
When we run out of catalogs we
can update and print more."
-Jay Donnely, Associated
In contrast, with the availability of catalog-ready attributed content and setting up the catalog with the Catalog Builder software, you eliminate the recurring expense of the old outsourcing model. Once in hand, it is easy to produce an unlimited number of catalogs, and you can make changes to the data on an ongoing basis. Catalog Builder promotes keeping your catalog fresh; you can update prices as needed and produce individualized customer catalogs on demand. "The fact that we don't have to pay production fees every time we go to print means we can print our catalogs with more frequency," Donnelly explained, "plus, we have the flexibility to make last-minute changes."
More businesses across all industries are turning to in-house catalog production thanks to the long-term cost savings and the flexibility gained by controlling their own catalog content. According to a 2004 Catalog Age Benchmark on Print, Production, and Paper, the percentage of respondents who design their own catalogs rose from 64% in 2000 to 75% in 2004.
Building Marketing Muscle
They say no pain, no gain. Building an in-house catalog is no exception. Wholesale distributor Milwaukee Stove completed their in-house catalog last year. They didn’t own any of the information or product images from their past catalogs—the outsourcer did. So they were starting from scratch. “While Catalog Builder made the process of entering the information and formatting it easy, getting the data was hard work,” said Phil Resch, Milwaukee Stove system administrator.
It's hard work for a number of reasons. The distributor's part numbers might not always match up with the manufacturers. There might be more part numbers in the distributor's inventory management system than they want to include in the catalog. Someone has to sort through all of that. Whether the distributor does it or contracts with a service provider like Computer Pundits to do it, content development takes time. Donnelly chose to do the work himself, and it became a labor of love. The end result is a catalog that he feels is well-organized and easy to use, with bonus features like cross-reference sheets and rebate details.
ARI continues to grow and expand with a philosophy based upon putting their customer's best interests first. Luckily for them, offering a catalog that contains good content benefits both the customer and the distributor. Customers gain convenient access to comprehensive and current product and pricing information as well as an awareness of the full product-line offering. The distributor sales force spends less time searching for specifications, shuffling binders and faxing spec sheets.
In ARI's case, Donnelly said "we used to have to pull out two or three different books to gather all the necessary information on a part number. Now it's all in one place. That's the beauty of the whole thing."
Creating content-rich catalogs and managing them in-house are really just the warm-up when it comes to what today's technology makes possible. Part numbers can be matched to back-end inventory management systems for automated catalog price updates. You can print mini-catalogs to target products and prices to specific market segments or to create seasonal catalogs and special promotional mailers. You can also distribute browser-driven interactive catalogs on CD-ROM or hosted on the Internet.
It's the efficiency and flexibility of their new catalogs, and the potential to truly flex their marketing muscles, that has wholesalers like ARI saying the end result is worth the work. As the saying goes, a little effort goes a long way.
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