Direct marketers holding their breath waiting for a complete economic turnaround are going to turn blue in the face, according to Steve Fuller, vice president of corporate marketing for L.L. Bean Inc.

“The current environment is the new normal,” Fuller told attendees of the New England Mail Order Association’s spring conference in Cambridge, MA on Thursday.

To make the Freeport, ME-based cataloger operate more effectively in the marketplace, the company has been agressively looking for opportunties to move its investment dollars from “infrastructure to marketplace.”

One such action is testing new marketing opportunities, such as direct response television. A DRTV spot offering purchasers of a $20 tote bag free monogramming and a $10 gift certificate good towards their next purchase is set to begin airing in two weeks.

Fuller said the offer will not be carried over to other channels such as the Internet or print so the company can fully evaulate the impact of the television spots.

The company has faced several challenges recently, not the least of which is a drop in the retail price of apparel in six of the past eight years. Bean battled this not only by reducing many of its retail prices but by centralizing several of its physical plants, removing 32 catalogs from its mail plan, eliminating over 2,300 unproductive catalog pages annually, and bycutting 25% of its SKUs and 50% of its vendors.

Bean has renegotiated many of its vendor contracts for services and goods such as printing, e-mail, paper and data. While it isn’t quite “Monty Hall time,” the economic climate is ripe for marketers to have leverage and “make a deal” when it comes to getting extra value. Call your vendors, he urged. “They’re expecting you.”

Not all of Bean’s efforts have been cuts. The company institued call center upgrades, resulting in a reduction of average call time by 5 seconds and increased revenue per call.

It also plans to expand its retail store operations, fully realizing that the competition is stiff. When users were asked to rank where they used their L.L. Bean branded credit card besides the catalog, the other top four spending locations weren’t direct marketers, they were discount giants Walmart, Home Depot, Target and Sears.”

“These gorillas are coming into our turf and taking whatever they can find,” said Fuller. For DMers looking to win the turf war, “relying on best buyers is a short term solution at best.”

Direct marketers holding their breath waiting for a complete economic turnaround are going to turn blue in the face, according to Steve Fuller, vice president of corporate marketing for L.L. Bean Inc.

“The current environment is the new normal,” Fuller told attendees of the New England Mail Order Association’s spring conference in Cambridge, MA on Thursday.

To make the Freeport, ME-based cataloger operate more effectively in the marketplace, the company has been agressively looking for opportunties to move its investment dollars from “infrastructure to marketplace.”

One such action is testing new marketing opportunities, such as direct response television. A DRTV spot offering purchasers of a $20 tote bag free monogramming and a $10 gift certificate good towards their next purchase is set to begin airing in two weeks.

Fuller said the offer will not be carried over to other channels such as the Internet or print so the company can fully evaulate the impact of the television spots.

The company has faced several challenges recently, not the least of which is a drop in the retail price of apparel in six of the past eight years. Bean battled this not only by reducing many of its retail prices but by centralizing several of its physical plants, removing 32 catalogs from its mail plan, eliminating over 2,300 unproductive catalog pages annually, and bycutting 25% of its SKUs and 50% of its vendors.

Bean has renegotiated many of its vendor contracts for services and goods such as printing, e-mail, paper and data. While it isn’t quite “Monty Hall time,” the economic climate is ripe for marketers to have leverage and “make a deal” when it comes to getting extra value. Call your vendors, he urged. “They’re expecting you.”

Not all of Bean’s efforts have been cuts. The company institued call center upgrades, resulting in a reduction of average call time by 5 seconds and increased revenue per call.

It also plans to expand its retail store operations, fully realizing that the competition is stiff. When users were asked to rank where they used their L.L. Bean branded credit card besides the catalog, the other top four spending locations weren’t direct marketers, they were discount giants Walmart, Home Depot, Target and Sears.”

“These gorillas are coming into our turf and taking whatever they can find,” said Fuller. For DMers looking to win the turf war, “relying on best buyers is a short term solution at best.”