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DIRECT: Where did you get your start-up capital?

GORDON: It's all self-funded. Two of the partners are the main source.

DIRECT: What sort of investment is necessary for a start-up?

GORDON: I think $2 million is accurate — it might even be on the low side. It depends on what kind of catalog it is and what the inventory and operations costs are.

DIRECT: How often are you mailing?

GORDON: We have four seasons and are in the mail two to three times per season. We mail more than 3 million catalogs [annually].

DIRECT: How are you promoting the catalog?

GORDON: We've done space ads in The New York Times Magazine. That's been our primary success. From day one we've also had an active public relations program. We're talking to editors and giving them product information. That's helped a lot, and generated a lot of requests for the catalog.

DIRECT: What about online?

GORDON: Last fall we started a more formal search engine marketing program. We've had some success with that and we're looking [into] where that can take us.

DIRECT: How important is the Web to your marketing strategy? Is it the channel that generates the most orders?

GORDON: We get a lot of orders online. That's because, for many people, it's easier to browse the print catalog and order [on the Web]. If we stopped mailing tomorrow, our orders certainly wouldn't be what they are. But the site also generates catalog requests. When we do PR or an ad in The New York Times, our catalog requests jump [online].

DIRECT: Are you using e-mail marketing?

GORDON: A little bit. We have a monthly newsletter, and send out some promotional e-mails to existing customers and people who signed up for the newsletter online.

DIRECT: What's the next step? Where would you like the company to be in five years?

GORDON: We'd like to continue to see what we can do. It's really early in the life of the company and it has a lot of potential. We'd like to [consider] how much we can grow — and, of course, how profitable we can [get].