Catalog / Brand Book

Claire Yulle of Indy Retail Academy, writes:

“Without a catalogue, a line sheet is just a list of facts. Without a line sheet, a traditional catalogue is just a bunch of nice words and pictures. It’s only when you put them together that they become persuasive.”

The key concept here is persuasion.

Your catalog should not only help a buyer feel more relaxed and confident about placing an order, but like they’d be missing out if they didn’t, that they’d be disappointing their customers by not offering such a must-have product. Your catalog should convince a buyer that your product is a no-brainer for their shop. It will sell sell sell, not just sit there looking pretty on their shelf.

So how does a catalog achieve that?

Your catalog offers an in-depth look at your brand. Catalogs are commonly designed for print, with a companion PDF. They’re heavy on stylized or lifestyle photos, demonstrating your products in their natural environment.

Catalogs are your chance to share all the things that set your brand apart: press, reviews, and awards you’ve received, glowing testimonials from a few of your more influential retailers, your innovations and synergistic collaborations, your certifications, your community involvement, charity partners, etc.

Catalogs don’t go into detail about your specific product offerings and how to order. That is the domain of your line sheet. It can be tempting to beef up your line sheet with in-depth information about your brand, but remember that buyers are busy people, and you don’t want to burden them with superfluous information when all they want to do is place an order.

A well-executed catalog can be the thing that makes certain retailers (and their staff) fall in love with your brand, especially smaller boutiques that take a more active role in curating their offerings. It’s a good tool to have in your sales satchel during sales calls, though arguably not an essential one.

Printed catalogs can be spendy. To really do the job justice, you’ll want to print four color on heavier stock paper, and have it stapled into a booklet. If you tend to change up your wholesale offerings fairly regularly, then you might want to leave specific product mentions out of your catalog, lest it become too quickly obsolete. Instead, design your catalog and line sheet to work in tandem — slip your line sheet (with specific product and ordering details) into your catalog (with more general information about your brand and process).

Truth be told, a well-designed website can accomplish the same thing, which we will get to in an upcoming post. Printed catalogs are a nice touch, but if you don’t belong to an industry where they’re expected of vendors (such as fashion), your marketing dollars may be more wisely focused on the end consumer rather than on retail buyers. Instead, build your catalog into your website and provide a link to it in all of your correspondence, as well as on your line sheet.

Click here to see an example of this in action, from the Olympia Provisions website.

On the other hand, a case can be made for a good old-fashioned product catalog. In this day and age where everything is digital, a physical artifact like a well-designed catalog can really stand out, whether delivered in person or through the mail. And hopefully it will linger on the buyer’s desk until they can no longer resist bringing your product line in.

For more information on creating a quality wholesale catalog, check out these resources:

• Classes from Indy Retail Academy, including one called Create Your Own Catalogue.
• Producing a Catalog (Fashion Incubator)

A Word About the Importance of Good Product Photography

Product and lifestyle photos are worth a thousand words apiece. If those thousand words are incorrectly exposed, poorly lit, pixelated, blurry, uninteresting, and badly composed, then you’ve spoken volumes about your brand’s ineptitude. Do a google search for “product photographers” and you’ll see what a professional photographer can bring to the mix. They are well worth the significant investment, but if you can’t swing the cost, or if you want to master product photography yourself so that you can keep your brand fresh and nimble, then check out some of the following DIY tutorials, and invest in the proper equipment — your camera phone isn’t going to cut it for these purposes.

• The Ultimate DIY Guide to Beautiful Product Photography (Shopify)
• How to Get Great DIY Photos of your Handmade Line — On the Cheap (Wholesale in a Box)
• Good Photography Sells Products, Part One (Fashion Incubator)
• Good Photography Sells Products, Part One (Fashion Incubator)
• The Importance of Stellar Product Photography (Modern Soapmaking)
• 12 Common Photography Mistakes That Might be Costing You Sales (Modern Soapmaking)