Eastern Storage Equipment, a Norwich-based manufacturer,
supplier, and installer of industrial storage and
materials-handling equipment, has published its debut
catalogue.
Founded 35 years ago, ESE first entered the mail order sector in
1984 distributing its products through GPC, an
industrial-equipment catalogue that aggregated products from 30
or so other suppliers and provided each distributor with a
branded front cover and personalised contact details. It
continued with GPC until 1991, when it began trading through the
Central Source catalogue, and later the Central Source website
www.business-needs.co.uk.
By 2005, ESE decided it needed to forge its own identity and
launched the website www.esedirect.co.uk. Boosted by continued
strong growth-2008 was the business’s best ever, with turnover of
£2.4 million-ESE decided to go it alone with the launch of a
print catalogue and invested £100,000 into new
initiatives.
The 352-page Eastern Storage Direct catalogue was designed by
Norwich design agency Farrows and was mailed on 8th February
featuring 10,000 of the company’s best-selling products.
“We spent two years analysing our product range,”
says Simon Francis, ESE’s managing director, explaining that the
company’s 24,000 products were filtered into 10,000 best-selling
lines for the first catalogue.
ESE printed 10,000 copies which were mailed to the company’s
6,500-strong customer database. The remainder of the names were
rented from Experian’s datapool based on a profile of ESE’s
existing customers.
The main catalogue will be distributed annually though Francis
has plans to supplement it with an A5 “best sellers”
mini-mailer next year. In addition to a mini catalogue, Francis
also plans to double the circulation of the main book.
Coinciding with the new catalogue, ESE unveiled its relaunched
website on 8th February. “It’s a totally new site,”
says Francis. “We’re using new software, and improvements
include more product variations on one page, larger images, more
detailed product information, customer account functionality,
e-catalogues, and more”. As of 15th February, the site was
live but Francis said more was being done to make it
“prettier” and add all the necessary back-office
functionalities.
Francis has high expectations of his new catalogue and website,
aiming to grow sales significantly. “We are a relatively
small company with a turnover of around £2.3 million and 13
staff, but we plan to take on another two people this year and
forecast a £3 million turnover for 2010”. Early
indications look positive-online orders are up 208 percent in the
first week of February compared with the same week in 2009.
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