Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases
Welco
Flexibility in B-to-B Catalog Publishing
Welco is the catalog equipment division of
Welconstruct Ltd., a $100 million per year
business. The company dates back to 1945,
when it started by selling industrial warehouse
products such as shelving and racking. It was
one of the first catalog businesses in the UK.
The company had a history of selling products
off the pages of a printed catalog. It developed
a solid reputation with its customers.
Nowadays, Welco sells products and publishes
catalogs in three industrial sectors: workplace
(commercial industrial), healthcare (hospitals and care homes), and education (schools
and universities). Welco’s products for the workplace have expanded to include
categories like cleaning supplies, office furniture, partitions, packaging materials, and
so on. Some of its school products include classroom furniture, gym equipment, and
audiovisual products.
Welco is a virtual company that does not carry any stock. Instead, it connects its
thousands of customers with hundreds of suppliers electronically. Welco uses its
suppliers as de facto warehouses: it sends orders to suppliers, the suppliers fulfill
orders with Welco’s name on them, and financial transactions are handled offline.
Thus, Welco distinguishes itself from traditional catalog businesses, which keep
inventory and are under pressure not to have any left over when a line is discontinued.
Yet unlike other inventory-free retailers, Welco has operated on this model from day
one.
The company has a Product Management team that selects the products to be shown in
each of several catalogs. They use a system from Pindar, a leading supplier of catalog
management software also located in the UK. A studio team takes the list of products to
be sold and produces a creative product – the catalogs. Then a multichannel marketing
team takes over and decides which customers and prospects get which catalogs and
which collateral materials about specific product sets. The customer service department
consists of people who are experts in certain product areas. They give advice on product
selection as well as take orders and handle returns. Finally, Welco has an e-commerce
and IT team to run everything smoothly.
85
©2008 Gilbane Group, Inc.
http://gilbane.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135