Coldwater Creek plans to close its Home catalog and Gallery Web site by this fall and consolidate the merchandise into its core catalogs.
Layoffs will be included among the 20 salaried staff reductions announced recently.
Home, a specialty book, accounted for 6.5% of the company’s overall circulation, reported at 183.5 million for the 12 months ended March 3, 2001.
Most of Home’s apparel — loungewear, weekend clothing and accessories — will show up in Natural Elements and North Country. The last catalog will mail in August or September, said spokesman David Gunter.
“The merchandise that was driving Home over the last several quarters was apparel,” Gunter continued.
“There are so many efficiencies in taking that apparel assortment and placing it in core titles where it makes sense, especially in this frugal national economic environment. We’ve been looking at ways to control costs and this is a very strong candidate for that.”
Hard goods, apparel and some jewelry from the Gallery site will be merged into Spirit of the West, with a smattering appearing in North Country.
“By consolidating the best merchandise from both of those assortments into existing core titles, we can capture approximately 60% of those sales in a much more efficient manner, primarily because we won’t be mailing the Home book,” Gunter added.
Home and Gallery make up a little less than 4% of the company’s total sales, he said. Net sales for fiscal 2000 were $458 million.
