WhatTheyThink’s most read story in 2006 was my interview with Hasbro’s Ed Kriete about the toy company’s first-ever printed catalog. WhatTheyThink followed up with Kriete to find out how the catalog performed for the company and what its future strategies might entail.                           

WTT:  Ed, nice talking to you again. When we last spoke about a year ago, you had just launched your first print catalog.  At the time, you indicated that you did not expect the catalog to take revenue from your retail channel, but rather to generate incremental volume.  Can you give us an update on how the program has worked out for you so far?

EK:  Sure. In the spring, we did a limited test mailing of the 68-page catalog and then expanded that mailing in the fall. The toy business is a flat-out race until December 31st, and now we are just going back through the results to see what happened, as I am sure our retailers are doing. So I don’t have the specifics because it is still very early.  Some of the data is tough to get at, because we are using the catalog partly to drive traffic to our web site so it gets mixed in with the overall e-commerce activity. Our perception now is that it was successful.  We saw a significant increase in traffic to our web site and in e-commerce.  Right now, there is a strong belief it was truly incremental and that it did do what we were looking for—driving volume online to us, but more importantly, to our retail partners.