#138 Blog Post, Paul Fredrick Sells Out

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2021/10/138-blog-post-paul-fredrick-sells-out.html

#138 Blog Post – Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Posted by Denny Hatch

 

Venture Capitalists Turn A Great
Direct Marketer into a Spammer

 

My last blog post described how I have shrunk over the years. My wardrobe looked like hell on me, so we bought a couple of handsome jackets and slacks—summer & winter.

 

For many years—back when I was editor and publisher of Target Marketing magazine—I dressed up for meetings, conventions, calls on advertisers and grand three-martini lunches at upmarket ginmills.

 

My shirt vendor of choice was the Paul Frederick catalog that delivered good quality non-iron utilitarian shirts off-the-rack in my precise size (17” neck, 33” sleeves). I was a customer for many years. Every couple of years shirts would wear thin and I would replace them.

 

In the 2004 I called Paul Fredrick Sacher, told him I was a customer and would like to do a cover story for Target Marketing magazine. He called back and we spent a good hour on the phone.

 

My cover profile of Paul Fredrick ran in the May 2004 Target Marketing. I recently re-read my piece and discovered the fascinating story of a very bright, hard-working young guy who stumbled into the shirt business and learned direct mail to build a thriving  menswear catalog business à la Lillian Vernon, John Peterman, Richard (Sharper Image) Thalheimer and Patricia and Mel (Banana Republic) Ziegler.

 

The candid information he shared with me — about direct marketing… about being an entrepreneur…  about launching and growing a business… was priceless!

https://www.mytotalretail.com/article/continual-change-keeps-paul-fredrick-menstyle-top-its-game-21233/all/

 

Seventeen years later I was absolutely comfortable going back to Paul Fredrick and ordering his shirts.  

 

When I googled www.PaulFredrick.com, his selection of shirts looked as good as ever, albeit pricier than the $39 I paid years ago. I ordered a non-iron white dress shirt and a handsome checked casual one. Order confirmed.

 

These are the two shirts I selected—
A modest, conservative test order.

 

 

A Litany of Greed

The very next day, I started getting a series junk emails from Paul Fredrick.com.

 

This from my Yahoo inbox that first 2-1/2 days:

Paul Fredrick was blitzing my life with junk emails starting at zero hour+20 minutes of his receiving my order—throwing shit against my wall hoping some of it will stick

 

What arrived in my in-box were e-offers for yes, more white and light blue dress shirts, but also garish, gawdawful polka-dot and flowered short-and-long-sleeved shirts plus suits, jackets, trousers, shoes, belts, cuff links and ties—hundreds of items!

 

How dare they start glutting my inbox with e-junk a full 8 days before my shirts were delivered, so I had the courtesy of evaluating the merchandise I ordered!

 

Could these emails really be coming from the elegant Paul Fredrick Sacher I knew?

I went back to my 17-year-old story to see Paul’s philosophy.

From my copy:

Paul Fredrick Sacher Offers the
Following Tips for Catalog Success:

• Advertise in the same media as your competitors. Many fledgling entrepreneurs believe the best place to advertise is where the competition isn’t. When he first started out, Sacher put his offer in publications that have off-the-page advertising and where his competitors were cashing in. Such a practice has paid off handsomely for his catalog.

 

• Be careful with whom you partner. Says Sacher: “Thankfully I didn’t take on any venture capital deals that required unrealistically rapid growth.”

 

• Expand your scope. Originally, Paul Fredrick MenStyle sold just three products: shirts, ties and cuff links. But changing lifestyles and work dress codes forced the company to expand its product scope. The company now offers a full line of casual shirts, trousers, sports coats, suits and shoes. Also, it recently launched a custom shirt business.

 

• Invest in e-commerce. Allen Abbott, vice president of marketing, says, “It’s difficult to survive today without a sophisticated presence on the Web.”

 

• When in doubt, do the obvious. When asked who designed the highly professional and complete catalog order form, Sacher said that he did. “I studied what everybody else was doing and did what they did,” he notes.

 

My conclusion these mailings did not come from the Paul Sacher I knew. The guy knew too much about direct mail… and the fact that it is what Stan Rapp calls “intimate advertising.” I envisioned two scenarios:

 

1.   Sacher had hired an ignorant millennial digital marketing kid looking to score points with the boss (and maybe commissions for himself) by generating  instant add-on business.

 

2.   Sacher was bought out by a VC desperate to get some instant maximum ROI.

 

Bingo!

ClearLight Partners Invests in Paul Fredrick
January 02, 2018 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Private equity firm ClearLight Partners announced today that it has made a majority investment in Paul Fredrick, a leading designer and direct-to-consumer retailer of men's apparel and related accessories. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Paul Fredrick was advised by KSCA | Investment Banking (www.ksca.com). ClearLight was advised by DANU Capital Group (www.danucapital.com).

ClearLight Partners' Portfolio

 

 

Clearly I was dealing with a venture capitalist running the following businesses: fitness centers, ice cream makers, automotive leather, landscaping, tactical systems and—TAH-DAH—the one business that’s in the same ballpark as direct marketer Paul Fredrick Sacher:

 

Walker Advertising

 

Clearly ClearLight Partners have no other direct marketing properties and don’t know squat about how to treat direct marketing customers. Instead, the word went out to the Paul Fredrick team to generate a lot of add-on business orders quick to maximize their ROI.

 

Paul Fredrick joined the ranks of the great catalogers that sold out to venture capitalist vultures: Lillian Vernon (Ripplewood Holdings, Sun Capital Partners, Taylor Corporation),  Sharper Image (Camelot Venture Group), Brooks Brothers (Authentic Brands Group and SPARC Group LLC), Brookstone (Chinese-owned Sailing Capital and Sanpower), Talbots (Sycamore Partners).

 

The ClearLight Partners’ shirts finally arrived; they are glorious—the best shirts by far that I have ever owned. They fit beautifully and make me look like a classy dude for the first time in years. I'm 86. I don't wear dress shirts often. These two shirts will last me for the rest of my life.

 

What I don't need for the rest of my life are two (or more) emails a day from shirt importer Paul Fredrick. What was once valuable information has become common spam that irritates the hell out of me and reminds me of my mortality.

I told the Paul Fredrick stooges to take my name off their lists and never contact me again. By return email (on a Sunday morning) I received the following:

 

Dear Denny Hatch,

Thank you for contacting Paul Fredrick. We removed your name and address from our catalog mailing list as you requested. We also removed you from our email list. Since we pre-address our catalogs, it can take up to thirty days for the complete removal to take effect. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please contact us at 1-800-247-1417 or email us at custserv@paulfredrick.com.

Sincerely,

[M.R.]

Paul Fredrick Customer Service

Takeaways to Consider

• “Direct marketing is intimate advertising.”
   —Stan Rapp

 

• "Direct marketing is not advertising in an envelope."
   —Bob Hacker 

 

• “To be successful in direct marketing you have to get inside the heads and under the skin of the person you are contacting: think how he thinks, feel what she feels and become that person, just like a Method Actor becomes the character being portrayed.”
   —Denny Hatch

 

• Just  because e-marketing and e-mail are essentially free, it’s imperative to treat customers and prospects with respect.

• “The consumer isn’t a moron. She is your wife.
—David Ogilvy.

• “I eat three meals a day. I can't eat four."
   —L.L. Bean

• “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
   —Jesus of Nazareth, Sermon on the Mount, AD 30

 

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#137 Boyds Magical Retail

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2021/10/137-boyds-magical-retail.html 

 

#137 Blog Post - Tuesday, October 5, 2021

 

Posted by Denny Hatch

 

BOYDS: A Magical Retail Experience!
Can You Replicate It Online? Yes!

 

 

Shopping for clothes has always bored the hell out of me.

 

All my working life I had a business wardrobe that served me well for sales calls, meetings and conventions. When I went freelance and started working from home, I did not use these duds very much, but I was always dressed appropriately.

 

Over the past six years I dropped 30 pounds through a combination of daily yoga and a healthier diet. My waist went from 40” to 35” and my collar size shrunk a full inch. My former upmarket wardrobe became more and more ill-fitting. Dress shirts with a 17” collar billowed out in all directions. Jackets drooped off my shoulders and all my trousers—like on Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp—were saggy-baggy.

 

Peggy was fed up with how I appeared and urged me to get a few nice clothes—a blue blazer for winter and a sports jacket for summer… plus a couple of pairs of trousers that fit.. and maybe a few dress shirts.

 

For years my store of choice in Philly has been BOYDS on Chestnut Street. There was never a wait. The selection was vast. The sales personnel and tailors were world class. They  got me in and out quickly. In 2018 The New York Times’ Steven Kurutz did a long feature story on BOYDS, The Last Great Clothing Store.

 

Last week Peggy and I went to BOYDS. I had forgotten what it was like to be coddled quickly by consummate professionals in a world-class retail store.

 

 

The palatial main floor had been redesigned to attract and serve Philadelphia’s upmarket women. Men’s wear was two flights up the wide marble staircase. We were immediately greeted by Joe Marcella, an elegantly attired and affable young man—masked for the Pandemic of course—as were we. We told him why we were there. He nodded and asked us to follow him to the elevator, which we took up to the next floor.

 

In one of several small sales solons, Joe handed us an ice-cold bottle of water (it was beastly hot outside). Peggy sat down in one of the comfortable chairs. Joe eyed me up and down, walked across the room and plucked a blue jacket from a rack and helped me on with it. Sleeves a bit too long and a tad tight in the middle. Otherwise, a perfect fit. 

 

Joe excused himself and ducked into an adjoining room and returned with two pair of trousers—dark gray and khaki.

 

NOTE: Joe did not measure me. He simply looked me over and knew instantly what would be right. Later, when we talked about a shirt, he used a tape measure to verify the circumference of my shrunk 16” neck.

 

I went into the large private dressing room and donned the trousers. When I returned, Sergio, one of BOYDS’ 40 tailors (also masked) was waiting for me. In no time he had made a few chalk marks on the jacket and sleeves. “I have arms of slightly different length,” I said. “I know,” Sergio said simply.

 

We had a brief discussion about the length of the trousers. “My legs are different lengths.,” I muttered. “I know,” Sergio said.

 

“For the shirt cuffs,” Joe asked me, “buttons or cufflinks.”

 

“Cufflinks,” said Peggy.

 

“Buttons,” I said. “I keep losing cufflinks.”

 

While Sergio was chalking and pinning, Joe stepped out of the room and returned with a light blue no-iron dress shirt from which he removed myriad pins and cardboard backing and unbuttoned it. I tried it on, and it was a perfect fit.

 

After donning my street clothes, Joe led us to the cashier. “Denny needs this by September 9^th,” Peggy said to Joe. “He’s giving a speech in Connecticut.”

 

“No problem,” said Joe. “It’ll be ready on the eighth in the morning. I’m in. If you’re not here by noon, I’ll give you call to remind you.”

 

Peggy gave them our credit and signed the chit. Three minutes later we were out Chestnut Street.

 

Elapsed time: 41 minutes.

 

I Loved it!

 

On September 8^th, we returned to Boyd’s to pick up my new wardrobe. Joe and Sergio met us. Quick try-on of jackets and trousers. Everything fit fine. Joe hung each jacket and trousers on a fat plastic suit hanger and presented them to us in two elegant, heavy-duty traveling wardrobe bags. Not chintzy, temporary plastic. These things will last for years!

 

I loved the entire experience!

 

Advice to Direct Marketers
Study Amazon and Steal Smart!

Let’s start with this premise: You are a seasoned direct marketer. You know how to approach customers and prospects with offers and persuade them to order.

 

Because you are online, your buyers have not gone through the hassles of lost time and travel to your store.

 

Instead, they have invited you into the privacy of their homes or offices where you can whisper your message directly into their ears—with no distractions. Right away you are one up on bricks-‘n’-mortar retail emporiums from the corner newsstand on up to Home Depot and Tiffany & Co.

 

Why Does the Online Shopping Experience Go Sour?
The Place to Look is Abandoned Shopping Carts Stats!

“In March 2020, 88.05 percent of all online shopping orders were abandoned, (i.e. not converted into a purchase).”  

 —Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate—Statistica

 

Imagine the mayhem if 88.05% of all supermarket customers abandoned their chock-a-block full shopping carts in the aisles and went home!

 

Why Do Online Buyers Bail Out? Here are 10 Reasons.

1. Annoyed at Complicated Checkout Process
(DH Solution: Consider using secret shoppers—not friends and family but strangers with no connection to marketing or to your business. Send them your mailing or ad and have them order. If they get frustrated, have them tell you where, when and why they got bogged down).

2. High Shipping Costs or Slow Shipping
(DH Solution: Many marketers offer FREE SHIPPING! It can be one of your  Unique Selling Propositions (USP). Sharpen your pencil, study your costs. Test pricing.)
3. Shipping Costs Listed Late
(DH Solution: Don’t promise a low, low price up front in the offer and then wallop them with an outrageously high shipping cost at the end. You immediately look sleazy.)

4. Forced to Register and Create an Account
(DH Solution: Make it easy to order. Don’t make extra work for the customer when there is no need for it. I never agree to create an account at the outset; I’m not ready to become a regular customer.) Here's how Peter Christian—UK menswear catalog—handles it:

 

5. Lack of Payment Options
(DH Solution: Make it easy to pay—whatever is most convenient for the buyer. For example, some merchants refuse to take American Express payments because of high fees. Bite the bullet, Baby. You want a happy customer, not a happy in-house bean counter.)  

6. Unsure of Security Features
(DH Solution: Reassure the customer his name will never be revealed or sold to others who could bombard him with offers.) Here's how Peter Christian—menswear catalog UK—handles it:

7. Coupon Codes and Promotional Offers
(DH Solution: These things drive me nuts. Remember Jay Leno’s six-word business model: “Write joke. Tell joke. Get check.” Remember the KISS formula: “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”)

8. Lack of Product Information
(DH Solution: No excuse for this. Your promotional copy should leave nothing to chance. For example, do you include size and weight? Check out the Bradford Exchange website or Parade magazone for the Thomas Kinkade Christmas Tchotchkes.. Exact heights of the tabletop Christmas trees and limited edition sculptures are always included.)

9. High Cost of Product
(DH Solution: Offer low monthly interest-free payments. Make it easy on the wallet.)

10. Want to Look Around
(DH Solution: Alas, your prospect feels a twinge of insecurity and discomfort. It’s usually not smart to mention the competition by name. If a multi-buyer, the customer knows you and trusts you. My suggestion: in one hour, send a low key, warm reminder that you are holding the shopping cart intact. Maybe say something like:
"If I don't hear back from you by tomorrow this time, I'll assume I can release your merchandise. Meanwhile if you have any questions, I'm Candice Smith at your service. Ask for me. Thank you.")
—Sitepoint: 10 Reasons for Abandoned Shopping Carts  

Amazon: The World’s 5^th Largest Corporation
With a Market Cap of $1.679 Trillion Dollars!

Imagine  where Amazon be today if it lost 88.05% of all its orders?

Deader than Kelsey’s nuts!

 

Do business with Amazon and you’re in a system of easy peasy ordering... dazzling delivery (damn near instant gratification)... and magical customer communications on the status of your order.  

 

And let’s not forget how easy it is to return merchandise to Amazon versus schlepping down to a retailer with merchandise under your arm and spending time explaining the problem to an irritated clerk.

 

The Single Thing That Catapulted Amazon
Into the Stratosphere: One-click Ordering!

“September 12, 2017, marked the end of an era as the patent expired for Amazon’s “1-Click” button for ordering. The idea that consumers could enter in their billing, shipping and payment information just once and then simply click a button to buy something going forward was unheard of when Amazon secured the patent in 1999, and it represented a breakthrough for the idea of hassle-free online shopping.”
—“Why Amazon’s ‘1-Click” Orderig Was a Game Changer”
Wharton/University of Pennsylvania

 

As chronicler of direct marketing, I was riveted by the announcement awarding Patent No. 5,960,411 to Amazon.com on September 28, 1999. Amazon immediatey filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the mega Barnes & Noble bookstore chain, effectively knocking its holiday promotion plans for that year’s holiday season into a cocked hat; B&N came within a whisker of going out of business.

 

Takeaways to Consider

• “Make it easy to order.” —Elsworth Howell

 

• If you want to satisfy repeat customers, offer 1-Click ordering. It's a subtle compliment that says: "Thank you. It's nice have you with me."

 

• Always include testimonials from happy customers. These are the equivalent of an enthusiastic extra sales person working for you."

 

• Always include a Guarantee of satisfaction and delight signed by the president of the company. For example, here is the greatest guarantee in the history of direct marketing. In 2020, L.L. Bean had gross sales of $1.59 billion. Go thou and do likewise!

 

 

• Above all, study Amazon and STEAL SMART. Dive into the weeds of their fulfillment. Order from Amazon. See how they fulfill. Especially check out Amazon's emails updating when you can expect delivery.

 

• One Example: take toilet paper. For years I have had a pathological fear of running out of toilet paper—not only for ourselves but also for houseguests.  I now can go to Amazon and click on the following:

 

I click on the above, type in “toilet paper.” Here’s what comes up for a one-click order that enables me to spend half a minute satisfying my psychotic insecurity:

 

 

• Amazin’ Amazon!

 

• I love it!

 

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