Holiday Catalogs Feel the Impact of Labor Shortages, Supply Chain (and yes, the Pandemic)

The holiday season is the Super Bowl for direct mail marketers who rely heavily on catalogs. With the masses searching for gift inspiration, catalogs are historically plentiful and thick this time of year, despite the continuing shift to online shopping. But with a pandemic, supply chain turmoil and labor shortages across the board, planning this year’s holiday catalogs was a careful balancing act that forced marketers to weigh displaying their wares versus being able to actually deliver them. Even the paper they’re printed on—and the specialists who make the presses run–are in short supply. Since the holiday mailers are created mid-summer, much of that planning was an educated guess based on last year’s experience. After all, that’s when similar uncertainty emerged about the state of the labor force, supply and maintaining social distancing in warehouses to prevent the spread of Covid-19. It turns out, things can get worse. “The magnitude of the labor challenges on this aspect of the business are unbelievable,” Leslie Newton, Plow & Hearth’s CEO, told Adweek. “We thought last year was bad. This year it's just worse.” ‘The perfect storm’ Despite those complications, many catalog-reliant businesses are experimenting. They’re creating books that are more experiential and meant to be leisurely perused and dog-eared, thanks to all the additional time spent at home. Print catalogs also entice readers to spend that disposable income they have from not taking vacations, not purchasing work wardrobes and supercharged unemployment checks. “We have higher than historic consumer demand, so marketers want to mail as broadly as they can to sell as much as possible,” Hamilton Davison, president and executive director of the American Catalog Mailers Association, told Adweek. “But they're having trouble getting merchandise because of supply chain problems and they're also having trouble getting paper and press time. It's really challenging to manage all of that. We have a perfect storm.” Enter, the ‘magalog’ Chewy, the direct-to-consumer pet supply retailer, now calls its holiday catalog a “magalog,” and it certainly features products and QR codes that direct customers to its website. It also includes tips for taking family photos with your pet—alongside product skews for matching outfits for fur babies and humans, of course—pet-friendly packing tips and even supplies to make a snow globe using its stickers, combined with your pet's image. “Past catalogs were more product-specific and this year it is more experiential, which brings to life how pets are a part of the holiday family traditions,” Diane Pelkey, Chewy’s vp of communications, told Adweek. For Uncommon Goods, the direct-to-consumer seller of unique gifts, its four-times per year catalogs—sent during significant gift-giving holidays—are their “largest marketing vehicle.” At 100 pages, the holiday book is the biggest. We want customers to feel like they're unfolding a story.Irene Bunnell, Uncommon Goods’ marketing manager After “drastically” cutting the 2020 mailing’s circulation by 80% because of the precariousness surrounding supply and distribution channels, this year’s book is back to normal circulation. And it’s been revamped to fit with the times we’re living in. In particular, there’s a focus on celebrating with loved ones no matter how big or small your gathering is. “We debuted a new look for the holiday catalog focusing on making it feel more like a gift guide,” Irene Bunnell, Uncommon Goods’ marketing manager, told Adweek. “We want customers to feel like they're unfolding a story and hopefully want to spend more time with the catalog.” They took their learnings from 2020, which turned out to be a “very successful” holiday season since so many people turned to online shopping. They used last year’s playbook for keeping employees safe and were prepared for the extended shopping season that now starts even before Halloween. To Reverse Declines, Direct Mail Updates Old Methods With Digital Touches Halloween starts in August That longer holiday season is something Plow & Hearth, which started as a small country store in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and grew nationally with a catalog business, has incorporated into their marketing plan. They moved the first holiday catalog drop up a few weeks to October 4, as they did last year, to mitigate supply chain issues, Newton said. It was also a way to “ride the wave” of the public’s desire to entertain outdoors and extend the typical holiday season as a way to spread cheer during uncertain times. Halloween decorating started in August, Newton said, and Christmas decorating started before Halloween ended. With that increase in outdoor entertaining, Newton noticed atypical holiday gifting. “Anything related to the outside is wildly popular,” she said. “Things that you wouldn't normally think of as gifts, like an arbor, a garden spinner or a fire pit are being gifted.” But like so many businesses, Newton recently learned there will likely be a delay in an upcoming catalog drop. The cause? Her printer of 30 years is experiencing a significant labor shortage. When she reached out to fellow members of the American Catalog Members Association, she learned many are experiencing similar delays and, as a result, multiple issues of their book land in mailboxes back-to-back. How Panda Express Reversed a Sales Slump With Direct Mail “We’re very fortunate that they worked with us to try to mitigate the damage as much as possible,” she said. “But everybody is feeling the pain. When they told me about the delay, I reached out to other members of the Catalog Association and asked, ‘How hard do I need to ring these guys over this issue?’ And the other members said, ‘You're lucky you even got that email.’”