(3 of 3)
Tweeds courts the youngest audience of the three. The average age of its customers is 30, vs. 36 at J. Crew and 40 at Lands' End. Many of Tweeds' customers, in fact, missed the baby boom by a few years: 30% are under 23. To keep its youthful clientele, Tweeds has sent catalogs to subscribers of Elle and Glamour magazines and has taken out ads in college publications.
All three catalogs are thriving at a time when the catalog business in general has plenty to worry about. Besides a slowing economy, the industry is suffering from rapid increases in its basic costs for paper, printing and postage. Third-class postal rates, for example, rose 25% last year alone. Another problem is a bill introduced in the House of Representatives in May that would allow states to force mail-order outfits to collect sales taxes from their customers, a process that catalog merchants view as a potentially nightmarish logistical and financial burden.
On top of those threats is the increasing crowding in the mail-order business, which is already suffering the first phase of a shake-out. Says Tweeds' Aschkenes: "It is definitely going to happen. Every year there's more fallout." But by all accounts, the three hot clothing catalogs are likely to thrive because they have caught the attention of an ideal audience: time- starved baby boomers who prefer to let their fingers do the shopping.
FOOTNOTE: *The correct punctuation should be Land's End, but someone made an error in the company's early stationery, and the name stuck.