Starting Your Own Catalog Business
by Danny Brown on January 21st, 2008
Even with online retail sales growing year over year, the retail catalog industry has remained a multi-billion dollar industry and has even outpaced online sales. Catalog sales is an excellent opportunity for existing online retailers to expand into a new channel and earn a major percentage of sales.
If you’re looking to start your own catalog business, one of the key factors in whether you’ll be successful or not is how you approach it. This includes doing your research before even thinking about what your catalog will be selling, and getting it printed. There are many more basics that you need to take into account before you start. As long as you take care of these basics, there’s no reason why your new venture shouldn’t be a success.
Research the Market
Although this may seem fairly obvious, it’s crucial that you research the market beforehand. After all, what’s the point in starting a catalog business if the area you’re looking to sell in is overcrowded? Join discussion groups, online forums, etc, on the products you’re interested in for your catalog, and gauge feedback on whether or not there’s a niche you can fill.
You’ll also want to research exactly what you’re going to need to be successful (printing company, distributor, etc), as well as what costs are going to be involved, and whether or not you’re eligible for a small business grant to help you get started.
Choose Your Products
The next thing you need to do is decide what you’re actually going to sell through your catalog business. Will it be similar to many other catalogs, and sell household bric-a-brac and home cleaning products, or are you going to be a niche provider of a certain range or brand? Knowing the market you’re after will go a long way to deciding what items you should sell – perhaps you can offer comics to collectors, or old video games to retro game fans? Having a specialist niche will allow you far greater chance of success than just being someone else in an overcrowded marketplace.
Printing
Once you know what you’re going to sell, and whom you’re going to sell to, the next obvious thing is to get your catalog printed. Although it is possible o do this yourself, especially in the beginning if you’re only starting out with a few hundred catalogs, there will come a time when you need a dedicated printing company in order to make your catalogs look as professional as possible.
Again, this is where a little bit of research can make all the difference. Find out what companies offer special deals for small businesses – they may even be able to advise on local companies who’d be interested in your services, or recommend where to get a good mailing list to advertise to. After all, if you’re successful, it stands to reason that it’ll be more business for the printing company in question.
Advertise
Potentially the biggest hurdle of all to overcome is getting your catalog noticed amongst the hundreds, if not thousands, that are already available. This is where you need to have a solid plan – ask relevant local businesses if they’ll display your catalog in return for free advertising in the early issues. Or attend trade shows and hand out copies to interested parties. If you have the capital to invest, you may want to look into purchasing mailing lists.
Starting a catalog business will not be easy, nor will it be inexpensive. With a little bit of forward planning, research, hitting the right people and a bit of hard work, there’s no reason why starting your own catalog business can’t yield some excellent results for you. Good luck!
