When Kate Spade died in 2018, fashion brand Frances Valentine faced a decision: either shut down or keep going “without one of the founders and core creative minds behind the company,” its director of marketing Florencia Gilardoni told Retail Brew.

Frances Valentine chose the latter, and one way it bolstered its brand presence during that difficult first year without Spade at the helm was a seemingly retrograde form of marketing: catalogs and direct mail.

“When we went into catalogs, customers’ mailboxes were still pretty slim and nobody was doing direct mail,” Gilardoni said. “So we were able to get a huge share of the mailbox at that time, which was great for us.”

But the fashion brand isn’t alone in reappraising the value of catalogs. The age-old marketing technique is seeing a comeback, as retailers seek a more direct route to their customers due to increased competition and higher costs in digital marketing.

Keep reading here.—AV

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The National Retail Federation (NRF) has removed a “mistaken” fact from a recent report claiming that organized retail crime (ORC) made up “nearly half” of inventory losses in 2021.

Mary McGinty, VP of communications for the NRF, told Retail Brew that the claim was a “mistaken inference” made by an analyst, which was based on an assertion made by Ben Dugan, president of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail (Clear), during Senate testimony in 2021 and in a Wall Street Journal feature story.

• Dugan claimed that ORC accounted for $45 billion in losses, and the NRF estimated that total losses were $94.5 billion in 2021. He later clarified that his estimate was based on a 2016 NRF survey.

The retraction came as the lobbying group continues to advocate for harsher laws around retail crime, including the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023, which aims to bolster federal enforcement of the problem.

In the meantime, the NRF is sticking to its guns that ORC is a serious challenge for retailers, while acknowledging that gathering data on the practice is an ongoing challenge.

Keep reading here.—AV

Most promotional content surrounding movie releases now seems trivial in comparison to this summer’s Barbenheimer-pocalypse, but Wonka is set to drop on Friday. One of the events Warner Bros. is putting on for the film is an activation at the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto. Let’s jump into everything else going on this week.

In events: Salesforce’s world tour is making its last stop of the year in New York City at the Javits Center on Thursday. Other stops on the tour included Dusseldorf, Tokyo, and Atlanta, where attendees met to discover the newest products and technology affecting their respective industries, including AI, which will be the focus on Thursday.

In earnings: Costco is set to report earnings Thursday, and recent analysis of its stock performance shows that the company is on a bit of a hot streak.

Keep reading here.—KM

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