The Chic Is in The Mail

By Barbara Rudolph

A well-tanned, fine-boned man lounges on a wicker chair in the middle of a vast lawn, the picture of leisure in his long-sleeve polo shirt and cotton twill trousers. A fresh-faced young woman walks barefoot on the beach, smartly / turned out in white cotton shorts and a sleeveless blouse. A square-jawed baby boomer clad in a classic linen shirt and cotton pants gazes serenely along a shoreline as if he is planning a bright future.

The people in these scenes, which evoke the studied relaxation of a Ralph Lauren ad, look like the sort of folks who would hate to spend any of their precious free time at a shopping mall. In fact, their well-composed snapshots come from the pages of America's popular new crop of mail-order catalogs: Lands' End,* J. Crew and Tweeds. These three retailers are reaping handsome sales by offering sporty, preppy wear to customers who are partial to natural fibers and toll-free shopping. Last year the three companies mailed a total of more than 120 million catalogs to prospective customers in all 50 states.

Many of the buyers are baby boomers, especially working mothers, who have all

but given up on department stores. Says Tess Goodier, 36, of Vienna, Va., mother of two young children: "It's so much easier than going over to J.C. Penney and chasing after my wandering kids." While the new catalog kings have much in common, each is trying to carve out its own identity:

LANDS' END. The largest of the three, Lands' End posted revenues of $456 million for the twelve months ending last January, an increase of 35% from the previous year and not far from the $580 million in sales racked up in 1988 by L.L. Bean, still the captain of the sportswear-catalog industry. Lands' End, launched in 1963 by Chairman Gary Comer, then a 36-year-old advertising copywriter at Young & Rubicam in Chicago, sells moderately priced, well-made staples. Among them: oxford-cloth shirts ($19.50); cotton twill skirts ($32.50); and silk foulard ties ($19). One of the company's specialties is the many-pocketed canvas attache bag ($39.50), which for many people has replaced the formal, hard-sided briefcase.

Lands' End makes its home amid the rolling cornfields of Dodgeville, Wis., (pop. 4,000), where 3,000 workers fill orders in a warehouse the size of ten football fields. The Middle-American locale is what Lands' End is all about. The company cultivates a shamelessly folksy image, urging readers of its magazine ads to call a "friendly southern Wisconsin voice." Lands' End operators, many of whom are housewives or students from the surrounding farm country, are famous for their willingness to chat, even about the weather. "We're trying to build a relationship with a customer, not consummate a sale," says President Richard Anderson.

The catalog keeps the conversation going. The text is often full of lengthy and technical explanations of how Lands' End products are made. Example: "At our yarn-spinning facility, every bale of cotton is inspected on both sides to insure top quality. (They end up rejecting 10% of the bales -- fussy, fussy folks.)"

Lands' End wins friends by populating its catalog with real people, complete with wrinkles and middle-age spread. Often the models are employees or readers who have sent in photos of themselves along with suggestions for the catalog. In one recent issue, Roxanne Clouse and her teenage daughter Franny, who are customers from Amazonia, Mo., sported bathing suits. Says one appreciative customer: "I get tired of catalogs full of models who wear a size 3."

J. CREW. Based in Manhattan's up-and-coming Flatiron section and housed in a loft building with hardwood floors and exposed industrial pipes, J. Crew is far from folksy. The company's offerings are decidedly casual but with a note of sophistication. Arthur Cinader, 61, J. Crew's chairman, describes the J. Crew look as "understated flair." Cinader, whose family-owned firm operates a clothing-and-furnishings catalog business called Popular Club Plan, started J. Crew six years ago and had an almost instant hit.

The catalog offers stylish variations on some familiar themes in American sportswear. Besides selling a garden-variety pocket T shirt ($12), J. Crew offers a prewashed (or "weathered," as the catalog puts it) T shirt for $24 in 15 different colors, including watermelon, tangelo and mango. Other characteristic items: Shaker cotton sweaters ($38) and unlined canvas jackets ($68). This year J. Crew is branching into clothes for the office as well. Fall offerings will include a wool V-neck dress ($128) and a men's herringbone-tweed jacket (about $250).

J. Crew is a family affair: Cinader's 28-year-old daughter Emily is the firm's president and chief of design, though she had no previous business experience when she joined the company in late 1982. Another daughter, Maud, 23, directs location photography for J. Crew. Nepotism may work: the company expects that its catalog sales this year will reach $150 million, up 50% from 1988.

TWEEDS. Since its first catalog was shipped less than two years ago, Tweeds has become the spunky and surprisingly successful upstart in the crowd. Estimated revenues for the current fiscal year: $37 million. Compared with its rivals, Tweeds' offerings are typically funkier, looser-fitting and more cosmopolitan, "classics with a European twist," as Tweeds President Jeff Aschkenes, 46, puts it. Many outfits are made of linen, this year's trendy fabric, and come in offbeat colors. Examples: pleated, prewashed linen trousers ($59) available in Moroccan brown, sage, cadet or flax; and cotton- Lycra pants ($29) in the colors of sky and palm. Tweeds' designers take about four trips to Europe each year to observe -- and sometimes borrow -- the latest Continental fashions and fabrics.

Based in a 100-year-old converted brick mill in Paterson, N.J., Tweeds is the creation of refugees from rival J. Crew. Ted Pamperin, 48, Tweeds' chairman, had worked as J. Crew's executive vice president and Aschkenes as its merchandising director. Though paid well at J. Crew, the two partners were frustrated entrepreneurs. Says Aschkenes: "We didn't want to be sitting on rocking chairs when we were 80 years old, never having tried it on our own." They raised $6 million in venture capital financing and now control a minority interest in the firm. The rivalry with their former bosses should be lively since the renegades have hired 18 former employees of J. Crew.

Tweeds courts the youngest audience of the three. The average age of its customers is 30, vs. 36 at J. Crew and 40 at Lands' End. Many of Tweeds' customers, in fact, missed the baby boom by a few years: 30% are under 23. To keep its youthful clientele, Tweeds has sent catalogs to subscribers of Elle and Glamour magazines and has taken out ads in college publications.

All three catalogs are thriving at a time when the catalog business in general has plenty to worry about. Besides a slowing economy, the industry is suffering from rapid increases in its basic costs for paper, printing and postage. Third-class postal rates, for example, rose 25% last year alone. Another problem is a bill introduced in the House of Representatives in May that would allow states to force mail-order outfits to collect sales taxes from their customers, a process that catalog merchants view as a potentially nightmarish logistical and financial burden.

On top of those threats is the increasing crowding in the mail-order business, which is already suffering the first phase of a shake-out. Says Tweeds' Aschkenes: "It is definitely going to happen. Every year there's more fallout." But by all accounts, the three hot clothing catalogs are likely to thrive because they have caught the attention of an ideal audience: time- starved baby boomers who prefer to let their fingers do the shopping.

FOOTNOTE: *The correct punctuation should be Land's End, but someone made an error in the company's early stationery, and the name stuck.