Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: FRIDAY, December 31, 1993 TAG: 9401030280 SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: The Free Lance-Star DATELINE: ORANGE, VA. LENGTH: Long
The company, which started as a retail store in Madison County in 1980, sends out 15 million catalogs a year, letting customers browse through page after page of rockers, bird feeders, butterfly houses and wind chimes.
The catalog items are functional, said merchandise manager Cal Saulnier. "If they happen to be good looking, that's a bonus."
The company appears to have found its niche. It grossed $350,000 in catalog sales its first year; this year, gross sales will total about $23 million, said Peter Rice, 48, co-founder and president.
In 1986, Inc. Magazine listed Plow & Hearth as one of the 500 fastest-growing private firms in the country.
It employs 160 people year-round and hires another 90 for the Christmas season. It has a retail store in Charlottesville, but catalog sales make up 93 percent of the business, Rice said.
Plow & Hearth's products conjure up comfortable feelings. Its catalogs picture rustic beds with plaid flannel sheets, slippers on a throw rug and footstools in front of a blazing fire. Porch swings and hammocks, croquet sets and wind chimes make customers think of relaxing afternoons spent outdoors. There are even items for beloved pets, from bunk beds for cats to heated water bowls.
The typical Plow & Hearth customer is someone who likes to stay at home, particularly a gardener, a birdwatcher or someone who entertains outdoors, Saulnier said.
"We're selling the pictures in the catalog," he said. "We don't even mail to apartment dwellers. They're living a different lifestyle."
Saulnier finds products to sell by going to 25 to 30 trade shows a year and scanning "tons" of catalogs.
"I have an idea of what is a Plow & Hearth item. It's more a feeling than anything else," he said.
Saulnier said one of the most popular items is the bat house. Bats eat mosquitoes, and customers swear that having a bat house keeps down the bugs.
Customers' interest in the company's products goes through cycles, he said.
"The challenge is to have products so the new customer thinks you're great, and put in enough new things to keep the older customer from being bored," Saulnier said.
Nearly half of the items in this spring's catalog will be new, he said. That's up from about 25 percent new items in previous catalogs.
One that will be on the cover is a Victorian bird feeder with a transmitter that enables customers to eavesdrop on the birds, piping the sounds of the chirping into the home. The price: $230.
The catalog has had its share of flops. Rice said sweaters and shirts didn't sell well. Neither do standard gardening tools. If a shovel breaks, people replace it at the local hardware store, he said.
Last year the company bought Kemp and George, a home-decorating catalog that features such items as light fixtures, architectural moldings, bathroom accessories and some furniture.
Like most mail-order merchants, Plow & Hearth's business peaks just prior to Christmas, when the company processes about 8,000 orders a day. During the summer lull, business drops to about 8,000 orders a month.
In the warehouse, Ann Ganz carried in boxes of 1,600 brass crickets. Tom Freshwater, who is in charge of the 100,000-square-foot warehouse, looked over orders in crates on conveyer belts, headed for packaging.
Caroline Busick, a warehouse supervisor, checked delivery schedules of products coming in. Items in the catalog come from factories across the United States and from Europe. Busick said about 18 vendors ship in products each day. Plow & Hearth repackages them before shipping to customers.
Busick's department also handles products that are returned by customers. Most returns come from products in the Kemp and George catalog, she said.
"It's a decorative type thing," she said, explaining that customers might like what they see in the catalog, but find that it doesn't fit in their home.
Customers ordering from the Plow & Hearth catalog rarely return orders, she said. "They're more functional items. People get them and they're happy."
Rice, a native of Pittsfield, Mass., moved to Orange County, northeast of Charlottesville, in 1969 after graduating from Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. For two years he taught English and coached at Woodberry Forest, an Orange County boarding school for boys. After studying business at the University of Virginia, he and a partner founded Blue Ridge Mountain Sports.
Rice later sold part of his interest in Blue Ridge Mountain Sports and moved to Kentucky to open a kayak-making business that failed. He and his wife, Peggy, moved back to Virginia, and Rice returned to Woodberry Forest.
In 1980 the entreprenurial bug bit him again, so Rice and a partner, Michael Burns, started Plow & Hearth.
Now Rice and his employees are getting ready to move in the spring to a 38-acre site in Madison County. The new site will have walking and running trails, a pond and a volleyball court. Rice, who lives on a 44-acre farm in Madison and often bikes 18 miles to work, said the image the company sells matches the attitude of its employees.
"The lifestyle we sell fits our lifestyle and really that of most of the people who work here," he said.
\ THE MAIL ORDER INDUSTRY\
About 10,000 companies send out catalogs annually.
Catalog sales reached $51.5 billion in 1992; they're expected to exceed $66 billion by 1996.
In the first nine months of 1993, direct-mail sales rose 7 percent over the 1992 period; total retail sales advanced 4.4 percent.
About 1.18 million people are employed in the catalog industry.
The average American household receives two catalogs a week.
The most frequently ordered catalog items are clothing, home furnishings and toys and games.
- Source: Direct Marketing Association, a trade association; and NPD Group, a marketing research firm.