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The week of Mardi Gras, Direct senior writer Richard H. Levey and contributing writer Jonathan Boorstein traveled to New Orleans to see firsthand the state of marketing in the storm-ravaged city.

One basic fact is that businesses relying on direct marketing need to look to options other than the mail to deliver their messages. Months after Hurricane Katrina, periodicals and standard mail going into most of the 701-based ZIP codes are turned away at the point of origin. The U.S. Postal Service is delivering only first class mail and items shipped via its priority services, and it doesn't guarantee anything like timely delivery on these.

Of course, this affects not only direct marketers but those who want to buy from them. Neil Jay Wiener, who owns Rumors, a mask-and-crafts store in the French Quarter, says the ban on catalogs means that he hasn't been able to see what his suppliers have created during the last six months. And the sporadic delivery of the services that are getting through means that a shipment of Mardi Gras merchandise sent to him on Feb. 23 by Priority Mail from Florida arrived Mar. 2 — two days after Mardi Gras ended.

The Harvey Press, a printing company that had been located on Canal Street just outside the Quarter, was not destroyed when the levees failed but was forced to move when a building next to it that had been damaged by Katrina's winds collapsed into it.

Harvey owned one of the only Web presses in the region. That means marketers who wish to do high-volume, high-speed printing must send their material out of the area. Harvey Press has established a new sales office in Mandeville, LA, and brokers the service it formerly was able to offer on its own to other companies located far from New Orleans.

The city is rebuilding, slowly but surely, thanks to the efforts of organizations like DesireNOLA, a tax-exempt nonprofit launched in early September that's providing cash grants, as well as pro bono consulting services from newly graduated MBAs. To date it has awarded, or is preparing to give away, more than $80,000.

“New Orleans is built on small businesses,” says Christopher Kane, president and founder of DesireNOLA and an attorney with New Orleans law firm Adams and Reese LLP. “You drive around and you won't see a lot of chain restaurants. Those [places] won't survive here. You see a lot of mom-and-pops, and those people are important to the culture.”

These enterprises include cookbook store Kitchen Witch, which was one of the first businesses to apply for a license in New Orleans when the city reopened after Katrina. The owners planned to relocate to San Francisco but reconsidered.

“We are part of the city's reconstruction,” co-founder Philipe LaMancusa says. “That's what we are here for.”