I’m cleaning out old files and came across some sample catalogues of a client of ours at O & M Direct.

In 1973 Peter Sheppard opend his first shoe store. He offered a unique range of brands from Europe and other parts. But his secret weapon was his mail-order business – his database. It was built mainly through his retail store(s).

In the 1980’s our agency wrote and designed his catalogue and mailings. The catalogue was called “Shop at Home” – he was way ahead of his time in the virtual shopping world. Not only did the catalogues offer deals on shoes, but also special offers from complementary third parties such as Sportscraft, David Cardigan, Gilchrist & Soames and others. Customers could shop from the comfort of their home, or visit a store.

He mailed two seasonal catalogues a year, usually at least 1 month before the retail season started. The reason was simple. The mail-order sales determined what shoes he should stock in his retail store. The brands and styles that sold well via mail, became the shoes that were featured in-store. This ensured good sales volume and minimal overstock of unpopular lines. It also meant he would have the right shoes on display as the new season started.

His mailings followed all the rules. They were packed with multiple pages to make them tactile and encourage involvement by the recipient – now known in these digi-days as customer engagement. The mailings included a catalogue, inserts with special offers, extra order forms, introduce-a-friend offers, even a free calendar with its own special offer printed on the cover in the Christmas mailing.

I looked at his site today – it still follows the classic rules of direct marketing, has a digital catalogue, shoe bling and a mail-order service amongst other things. Online retailing is just a remote ordering service that delivers the products by mail or courier. The Peter Sheppard site is simply an evolution of its original offline mail-order business.

The site even has a separate brand www.slippersdirect.com.au so you can have your comfy foot warmers delivered direct to your door.

If you work in retail your customer database is your most valuable asset. It took Amazon years to make money, but once it had a sizable customer database it became profitable – because it’s cheaper and easier to sell to someone you know (your customer) than someone you don’t know. Repeat business is now the lifeblood of Amazon.

Through testing, your database can reveal insights that can mean the difference between profit and loss. And that goes for physical retail stores with online businesses, as well as pure online businesses that only sell via websites and other digital channels like email and social media.

The problem for many retailers is they don’t have a database of their customers – it’s stuck in the POS system, or the accounts software. And they rarely use their website to capture data and gain knowledge about their customers – even though it’s easy to do so.

These are often the businesses with managers complaining about sales or the economy. Yet if they just invested some time and money into creating a customer database they’d be in much better financial shape and minimise the peaks and troughs in their trade. And it only needs to be little data – not BIG data.

Peter Sheppard has been thriving for 40 years through smart use of customer data. And by adapting to technological changes he has continued to enhance his personal service. His business is still a hard core retail one and it still uses the way of direct marketing to succeed, even in the digital world.

What’s that adage again – what’s old is new again…again?