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