Magazines give leads for catalogue sales

Your news item about the takeover of catalogue specialist Code London by contract publisher John Brown Citrus (MW June 15) indicates significant changes in the catalogue media.

As the web takes over the functional aspects of distance shopping, some retailers are using catalogues in a far more inspirational way. Catalogues are retained and browsed through in a totally different manner to the immediacy of online shopping. Magazines have always achieved the kind of communication, inspiration and retention that a lot of other media can only wish for, so it is appropriate that magazine editorial techniques are now being used in catalogues.

Two of the UK’s biggest high-street retailers now employ publishing agencies to produce their catalogues – John Lewis at John Brown Citrus/Code, and Marks & Spencer Home at Axon Publishing.

It will be interesting to see how many retailers follow suit in exploring creative catalogues’ potential as part of multi-channel marketing.

Paul Keers

Editorial director

Axon Publishing

London EC2