Jason Tasse wasn’t expecting to face a holiday catalogue conundrum for two years in a row. The president and COO of Lee Valley Tools told OBJ on Tuesday that the Ottawa business has been producing catalogues throughout its 48-year history. Its 60-page holiday catalogue takes about six months to create, he said, from ideation to […]
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Jason Tasse wasn’t expecting to face a holiday catalogue conundrum for two years in a row.
The president and COO of Lee Valley Tools told OBJ on Tuesday that the Ottawa business has been producing catalogues throughout its 48-year history. Its 60-page holiday catalogue takes about six months to create, he said, from ideation to the final printed product.
For years, Lee Valley sent the holiday catalogue to thousands of customers through Canada Post’s addressed ad-mail service. Even last year, when Canada Post employees started a month-long strike, Lee Valley was able to get the catalogue out, but then had to cope with customers who were wary of ordering products online as they were afraid of not receiving them in time for the holidays, Tasse said.
So when it came to planning this year’s issue, Tasse said he didn’t believe the company would see its catalogue distribution disrupted again.
“This year has been a challenge because we’ve purchased the product, built the catalogue, refined our mailing list and printed (it). Just as they were ready to be addressed to 800,000 Canadian customers, we experienced, for the second time in 11 months, another postal disruption.
“We always have a plan B but the problem with plan B is that it’s never as effective as plan A … When the question was raised if there would be another Canada Post work interruption, I said, ‘Oh, come on! Twice in one year?’ Here we are,” Tasse told OBJ. “It’s really unfortunate that small and medium businesses continuously rely on a national service and continue to feel the pressure and challenge of having to work through it.”
Now, with Canada Post on rotating strikes, Lee Valley is having issues getting its catalogue into customers’ hands. Tasse said the next best solution is more costly and less effective.
“Our plan B was to take a small percentage of catalogues, pay a premium for recent buyers and deliver them through a parcel delivery service and insert the remaining catalogues into neighbourhood flyers and newspapers of existing media,” Tasse said, adding that if a customer isn’t subscribed to neighbourhood mail, they don’t get their catalogue.
In addition to considering alternate delivery options, Tasse said the company looked at ways to encourage customers to visit Lee Valley stores by crafting a “pay-it-forward” donation campaign.
“We wanted to encourage our customers to come into the store and pick (the catalogues) up because our stores are well-stocked and ready … We were going to give the postal service about a dollar apiece to deliver (the catalogues). So what we did was we offered the customers to come in (for) that same dollar. We offered them should they donate the dollar that we’d match it to (donate) to the local food bank,” he said, adding that about 1,000 customers have chosen to donate their dollar.
Tasse said that many observers ask: if a print product is costly and lends itself to delivery issues, why bother with it? But despite living in an increasingly digital world, Lee Valley’s customers still look forward to a print product, he said.
“Our customers have told us repeatedly that, even through survey data as recent as this year, they love the Lee Valley catalogue … There’s something about having a high-quality catalogue sitting on your coffee table that tells a wonderful product story. There’s something really tactile and rich about having a catalogue. The challenge with digital is it’s very hard to deliver 60 pages of content in a way that people are willing to consume it,” he said.
Lee Valley’s in-store catalogue donation campaign runs until Nov. 15, but Tasse added that the company will leave the donation box for the remainder of the holiday season.
Planning for next year, he said there is no silver-bullet solution to the postal delivery disruptions.
“Canada Post is the only service that offers addressed ad-mail. There is a significant gap between that and the next solution. We’re working with package delivery services and new carriers to see how we can deliver in a cost-effective way across Canada,” he said, adding that Lee Valley continues to encourage customers to sign up for the digital copy.
Local last-mile delivery company steps in
Meanwhile, Alok Ahuja, CEO and co-founder of last-mile delivery company Trexity, told OBJ on Wednesday that when postal disruptions continued into the last few months of this year, businesses started reaching out looking for a solution to their catalogue woes.
“We’re used to having information about the customers, (such as) their email (and) phone number and we can communicate with them and track their package. This was completely outside of our platform, so we regrouped as a company and built something off-platform that internally we joked and called, ‘Trexity Post,’” Ahuja said.
And so Trexity quietly created a platform to deliver the catalogues of small and medium-sized businesses to customers. “This was a Band-Aid solution. We did not forecast this to be part of our Q4 roadmap, but we didn’t want to say no … It was very easy on our system and it allowed us to move a lot more packages, catalogues and flyers at one time.”
Between the recent launch of its customer-to-customer delivery platform, delivering holiday catalogues and its core small-parcel delivery, Trexity is facing a busy holiday season, Ahuja added.
“We've already tripled from what we did last year. We're very happy with the growth we're (seeing) as a company, but we are just excited to, once again, be a part of the madness that is the holiday season with all of our businesses.”
