CATALOG PRODUCT SAID TO NEED FRESH IMAGE

DAN ALAIMO

Catalog titles offer retailers margin, but it will be tough for them to grab shopper attention given the stiff title competition this fourth quarter.

"Because of all the big event titles, catalog is a tough sell in the fourth quarter, acknowledged Mike Aufricht, vice president of retail marketing for supermarkets and drugstores at Buena Vista Home Video, Burbank, Calif.

"It's harder to get new catalog product placed during the fourth quarter because the retailers are just inundated with very strong titles from our company and from all the other studios," he said.

"In general, supermarkets are starting to carry a lot more catalog product. As supermarkets got into the video business, they got in with the hits. But now they are willing to step out and bring a little more product in, and get more into the catalog business. They know it's a way of getting their overall margins up, and it really allows them to establish themselves as a video destination," he said.

In his new role, Jeffrey Yapp, president, worldwide, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Beverly Hills, Calif., said his most interesting challenge is selling more catalog product. "I don't think it is being done well by anybody," he said.

In the supermarkets that have racks for catalog video titles, "the challenge is to keep it fresh. What happens in grocery stores is we don't manage that section," according to Yapp. "It becomes like the old traditional video wall of death. You put the titles in and the ones that sell, sell out, and the ones that don't sell, stay there, and then all of a sudden that whole floor space is dead," he said.

The key is rotating the stock to condition customers to expect something new.

"That is how we manage our catalog in all our mass stores. I've got to take that same discipline into the grocery stores. But I do think it is viable business," Yapp said.