Granola With Style

SURE, GRANOLA IS GREAT. Who doesn't like granola? It's crunchy, it's nutty. But it doesn't have a lot of pizzazz, does it?

Cataloger Claire Gordon knew there was a market for earth-friendly furnishings and accessories with a bit of flair. In October 2004, she and her co-founders mailed the first edition of Viva Terra, a book offering high-end, eco-positive gifts and housewares.

Gordon has long been enamored of the catalog business.

“I've always been a huge fan of catalogs,” she says. “That's what I did out of graduate school and just got hooked. I've always just loved, from a marketing standpoint, that you can see the results of what you're doing. And that makes for a lot of fun.”

Before helping to establish San Rafael, CA-based Viva Terra with Bonnie Trust Dahan, Bob Perkowitz and Fred Kamgar, Gordon was vice president of marketing for Design Within Reach and co-president and CMO of Smith+Noble. She started her catalog career at Knight's Ltd., working on books such as Home Decorators Collection.

Direct spoke with Gordon recently about Viva Terra's beginnings and the challenges of starting up a catalog in today's economic environment. In March, she told attendees at the New England Mail Order Association's spring conference that it was fortunate the catalog had the budget in place to cover some unexpected operations problems.

“We were lucky we were self-funded, [so we didn't have to answer to investors],” Gordon says. “Cash-flow forecasting in a start-up can be very challenging, because you have so little information about the business's behavior.”

Vendors can spring surprises on catalogers too, she says, noting that Viva Terra sources some of its products from small artisans. While many act very professionally, others may not answer the phone for weeks at a time. One — which the company was relying on for $20,000 worth of back-ordered product — simply disappeared without a trace.

“Suppliers may behave unexpectedly,” she says. “Expect the unexpected, because it will happen.”

DIRECT: The home furnishings and accessories categories are very competitive. What does Viva Terra offer that similar books in these niches don't?

GORDON: We're appealing to customers who want to have an environmentally [sound] life, with style. They're not ‘granola customers.’ They want something that's more stylish and more in keeping with the rest of their lifestyle — but they want it to be green as well. You can find that stuff out there, but it's certainly not easy.

DIRECT: Demographically, who are your customers?

GORDON: We have a wide range. They're pretty well-educated, upscale. A bit of an older consumer — age 45 to 55 and up.

DIRECT: Who are your competitors?

GORDON: Anybody like Sundance or Gaiam. [There are] a lot of people, because we're out attacking the same niche as home furnishings catalogs. But we don't look at it as direct competition. We have a niche, but a lot of people are competing for the same dollar.

DIRECT: What were the biggest challenges in starting the catalog and gearing up for your first mailing?

GORDON: The biggest challenge in starting anything is getting the operations under control. And then you have to produce a catalog. When you have no information, that's a real test. You don't know what people want to buy, you don't know how much of it they'll want to buy. From a list standpoint we had a general idea of who to mail to, but you don't know exactly. [And] getting things done in a tight time frame [wasn't easy]. We made the decision to start in March 2004 and mailed a holiday book seven months later.

DIRECT: Do you think that was too quick? If you had it to do again, would you have built more time into the mix?

GORDON: That's hard to say. You always think you could do better if you had more time, but I don't know if that's really true. I think it was important for us to get a holiday catalog out there.

DIRECT: Were there any mistakes you made in the launch? And conversely, what was the biggest surprise or success of that first mailing?

GORDON: I think the biggest success was that some of our products really resonated with people and we weren't quite expecting [that]. We have root bowls in our catalog — made from the discarded roots of Chinese fir trees — and they turned out to be great items. I mean, we really liked them, but we weren't sure our customers would. You never know. In terms of problems, one was operations. There [wasn't much time before rollout], and we had quite a few systems problems. And at holidays, there's a lot of pressure. You don't want to disappoint anyone.

DIRECT: How did the first catalog do?

GORDON: It did well enough to keep us going. (Laughs.) It didn't rock the world, but it showed there was potential.

DIRECT: What functions do you outsource and what do you handle in house?

GORDON: We outsource creative, fulfillment and customer service. [With] creative, we felt we'd get more bang for the buck [that way]. We had somebody who [co-founder] Bonnie [Trust Dahan] had worked with and was really comfortable with. [Plus,] we didn't have enough [work] to keep somebody busy [full time], and it wasn't like one of the founders was a designer. Then it might have been different. As far as operations goes, because we didn't know how the catalog was going to do and it's a big investment to open a fulfillment facility, we thought it'd be better to work with people who could scale more easily than we could. For example, if you have a runaway success, you have to handle twice the calls. It's a lot easier if you're working with a third party [rather than having to] run out and hire [people quickly].

DIRECT: You work with a lot of small vendors. What advice can you give to foster that relationship?

GORDON: Ask a lot of questions up front. Make sure the vendor understands how the catalog business works, and that once you print a catalog and put a product out there, it's going to be [in the market] for a certain amount of time and you have to be willing to take care of the customers. We do ask those questions, and get the answers. But unfortunately, sometimes the reality is something different.