C – – – – – – – – – is a dirty word !
Coronavirus, you’d think wouldn’t you?. You’d be wrong, the dirty word beginning with C is CATALOGUES !!!!!!!!
Hopefully you’ve read my previous blog entries, then you’d realise that I too, had an aversion to catalogues. I just couldn’t get passed it. I don’t know what it is. Did I just associate them with poor sad people in anoraks’ & did not want to become one of that brigade. If you think like that, then I’m here to tell you, that you couldn’t be further from the truth. The people that I’ve come across in a previous business & the people in the business we’re in now, are like-minded entrepreneurs, extremely hard working & going out in all weathers if it’s needed (& in that case an anorak would be a sensible thing to wear !!)
Guess what? If you can’t get by ‘catalogues’, fine, these days, in our business, you don’t have to work with them. Some people start online (more so lately because of coronavirus). It’s been brilliant because we’ve learned new computer skills from some of the more experienced people. Some people, who’ve started as online retailers, have seen the success of the catalogues, & tried it themselves. But you don’t have to. So, you can retail online, retail with catalogues, or do both. YOUR business, you decide. We just help you, whichever you choose
When we started 22 years ago, there was no online, just catalogues, so we did catalogues. Online & catalogues both work, but there are so many potential customers out there, of ALL ages, that prefer to have the option of both
Listening to peoples’ comments over the years, I think the following sums up brilliantly, why both ways of retailing work, in different situations
For a start, these days, if I want a specific product, It’s not necessary to make a day or twos expedition to the shops to find it. If it’s not something we sell, I’ll choose an online shop, whether it be Argos, Amazon or one of a host of others, because I’d be looking for a certain thing, however, if you pick up a catalogue & browse through it, in all probability, you’ll find lots of things, that you didn’t know you needed! ! That’s why catalogues work. Companies like Freemans still send out paper catalogues to customers, because if you’ve gone online to buy a pair of shoes, you probably didn’t go & look at the bedding did you?
Catalogues find customers. You just need to blanket drop over & over again, to find your customers. Online we advertise our products & build up a customer base. If you’re doing both, you’ll find that a few will be common to both groups, but there will be a larger percentage that will fit into one or the other
When I first started, I had my leg in plaster & relied on John driving me round, with me with my leg up on the back seat & me being the back-seat driver telling him which houses to deliver the catalogues to
A year into it we decided we’d like to grow our business, by showing others, & by the time I was earning more than John, he decided that he would leave work because he wanted to invest his time in helping to build it up
Don’t let anyone tell you that cataloguing can’t be fun. John realised he would have to build up the customer base, whilst he was working at a garage in the next village. Once he collected catalogues when he was test driving a car he’d been working on. He only did that once, because he almost got caught out when he got the call that a customer had arrived early to collect his car, so he had to drive home quickly & dump all the catalogues on the front lawn. After that he used his lunch break to collect them!
If you want to satisfy yourself that people still love to browse through catalogues, try an experiment. If you have a canteen where you work, or a rest room, leave some catalogues there & see how many people pick them up in preference to somebodys’ discarded newspaper. AND just to make sure that you are catering for everyone, make sure your webshop address is on your details label too, somebody is bound to jot it down (practising what I preach, ours is at the end of todays blog)
Both online & catalogues work. Combine both activities – Awesome !
Start by promoting products like these, with proven track records & you’re on a winner.
ECO PRODUCTS FROM VIVA MK NETWORK
More at https://annandjohncoe.vivamknetwork.biz/SHOP
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