Focus On: Merchandising: Show 'Em Your Wares

Bill McCarthy, executive director of the Southwest Indian Foundation, has mastered the development of high-quality Indian jewelry, pottery, kachina dolls and other Native American-related gifts, books, music, clothing and videos. The catalog entity has created jobs for Indian artisans of the Navajo tribe and the pueblo tribes of the Zuni, Laguna, Acoma and Hopi. Since 1990, McCarthy has increased SWIF’s proprietary items from 10 products pictured on one page, which was folded and inserted into a No. 10 envelope, to the 375 products in the 120-page catalog for Spring 2004, which will have a circulation of 14 million.

To make the best use of space in a catalog, there are some basic rules of thumb to consider. First, assuming that new products are equal in mail-order buyer appeal to existing products, demand will increase anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent of the corresponding space-percentage increase. For example, a 12 percent increase in space should achieve up to a 6 percent increase in sales.

From a product-per-page perspective, gift catalogs need to feature four to five products (not SKUs) per page. Nonprofit catalogs also have the responsibility of balancing the needs of curators, program directors, exhibition directors and legal advisors with the preferences of the shopper. No small task.

Marketing and creative
The Southwest Indian Foun-dation uses about 25 percent of the space in its catalog to tell its story and explain its mission. Profits from catalog sales join other donations to fund social action, education, job training, household necessities and arts development, etc., for Native American peoples. From a catalog space/cost perspective, one could argue that the extensive and expensive space that’s now being filled with copy would be better used for product photos and depictions. Nonprofits must abide by certain IRS regulations if they want to maintain their 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. But equally as important, this space has been proven to yield considerable donations in addition to product sales.