QUOTE a CD Rom version of the catalogue
I totally empathise with the view that many wants and desires expressed by customers do not translate into hard sales. To a very large degree, opinion polls of any kind are a useless and misleading reflection of what people will actually spend their money on. It doesn't cost them one penny to casually state the sort of things they think they might like to see, but actually spending their cash is a completely different matter!
In my view, train catalogues are far too expensive and, in addition to the enormous cost of producing them, the cost of shipping, whether in bulk to dealers or direct to individual customers, is prohibitive in itself. Paper is heavy!
This is where the desire for a CD has come from - the savings on shipping alone are not to be sneezed at.
Additionally, it is every bit as impossible to know what the demand for catalogues will be as it is to forecast the demand for CDs and there is a permanent and ongoing risk of superseded catalogues (or CDs) being left in stock, at zero value to anyone, and taking up valuable storage space. The opposite extreme is where a catalogue is simply not available when a customer wants one, if at all. The chances of forecasting demand, 'just right', are next to nothing.
The answer is not a CD, but to make the complete catalogue directly downloadable from the web site. It should be of the highest possible quality, at least on a par with the paper version. Customers should enjoy the option of downloading only the section(s) they want, WHEN they want it. They should have an option to print if they want to, but I would imagine that most wouldn't bother with the time and expense, though of course some would. So offer the option. Enterprising retailers might well see an opportunity to print high quality paper copies, on demand, for customers who don't have a computer and printer or for those who do, but not the time, desire or expertise to do the job themselves.
Bang up to date, retail price lists should be similarly available to download. These could be updated just as immediately and frequently as the supplier desired, with very little additional cost in their setting up and virtually none in their distribution. Each page would be clearly dated so as to avoid any possible misunderstanding of what was the current price or when it applied.
This electronic approach would have substantial, obvious cost saving benefits for both producer and customer, but with several other significant advantages.
Shipping cost, removed.
Delays, removed.
Waste, removed.
Shelf/storage space requirement, removed.
"Catalogue not available",would never again be a possibility.
Old catalogues could be reliable stored, ad infinitum.
Updates and improvements, whether to product or price, almost immediate.
Updating of catalogues would be hugely more efficient.
Extra or improved 'pages' could be inserted with ease.
'New' catalogues could be issued more frequently.
Careful design could enable much more detailed views of all products, with additional angles and zoomed close-ups added over time.
Hot links to appropriate spare parts could be inserted.
Hot links to handy hints and tips could be inserted.
The list is almost unending.
As Nike said, "Just do it!"
