ECMOD 2008 Preview
Merchandising
marches on
The 2nd October ECMOD seminar “21st-Century Buying and Merchandising” will
look at the opportunities and challenges facing merchandisers and buyers in this
era of multiple marketing channels, compressed product lifecycles and increased
competition. Andrew Wilson of the Catalogue Consultancy, who is chairing the
session, looks at the greatest influence on merchandising today: the web
I
t all used to be so easy. We had the gift of In a different way, music downloads have
all teenagers: We knew everything. I speak had an incredible effect on the music industry.
of that time prior to 1995, when if you sold The industry had got used to technology being
direct to your consumers remotely, you used purely of benefit to the industry. I have bought
catalogues, off-the-page and direct mail to do it. some of my music three times over, on vinyl, on
The great thing was that we knew just about cassette and on CD—each purchase from the
everything there was to know about these media same company, of the same product, just in a
and how to merchandise them. In this context different format. The music industry was pretty
I’m using merchandising in its broader, American slow off the mark in the digital age. In addition,
meaning: selling and positioning the product as due to some very heavy-handed tactics, it
well keeping the item in stock, which is usually became immensely unpopular with consumers
the British definition. We were dealing with a and artists alike. Digital downloads (and the
mature industry that some say started with ripping of CDs) have not conformed to the usual
Benjamin Franklin selling scientific equipment in music industry model of new technology = huge
the 18th century, worked its way through selling profits. Therefore, the music industry is confused
Andrew Wilson
watches to people who wanted to work on the and angry with its consumers.
British railways in the 19th, and then through the In our industry, the internet has been a
“big book” and “specialogue” booms of the 20th. disruptive invention. It is unthinkable now to
At the end of these couple of hundred years have a catalogue without a website attached.
we pretty much knew what we were doing. Then A website is just something you have; your
along came a disruptive invention: the internet. business is not considered relevant otherwise.
Disruptive inventions are those that change At first the internet had little impact on
things totally, for an industry or for everyone. Two catalogue merchandisers, as it tended to get
other such inventions are the pocket calculator traffic only from people who received a catalogue
and music downloads. and chose the web as their order channel in
Before the pocket calculator preference to mail or phone. Websites weren’t
came along, architects, civil terribly good at selling in the early days. They
engineers, mathematicians and tended to be grey, blue and boring. Even Bill
scientists used the slide rule. Gates said in 1998, “Sometimes we do get taken
This looked like a ruler with by surprise. For example, when the internet came
a centre that slid lengthwise. along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority.” Some
The centre and the outer part cataloguers didn’t even rate it that highly.
were calibrated, and you lined Now, 13 years after Amazon.com launched,
up the calibrations to calculate the web dominates our business. It has provided
everything from pi to the new impetus to our industry, raised questions on
strength of suspension bridges. the future of the catalogue and introduced new
A whole industry was devoted to customer groups to remote shopping.
manufacturing these things. It has also provided, and indeed still provides,
Then the industry headaches for merchandisers and buyers. It
Grey, blue and boring:
disappeared almost overnight. Electronic, then is such a complex entity, with revenue streams
the original version of pocket, calculators came along and rendered the coming from offline and online promotions, from
Amazon.com slide rule irrelevant. natural search and paid ads, from mobile devices
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