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The days of J.Crew’s much-loved print catalog, a concentrated dose of its buoyant aesthetic and a source of styling inspiration for many shoppers, are numbered. As we know it, at least.
On a call with investors Monday afternoon, executives announced that the existing system of printing and mailing out copies of the J.Crew Style Guide doesn’t speak to the fast-paced, increasingly digital way that people shop today. So they’re “reinventing” the catalog and implementing a new marketing strategy across channels.
The Style Guide isn’t getting killed entirely, but it will have fewer pages — savings that will ultimately get passed on to investing in digital initiatives. Men’s and women’s content will be split into separate books and shipped to customers in a more targeted way.
The diminishment of the print catalog is a relatively small casualty of J.Crew’s ongoing troubles, which haven’t eased in recent months. The company reported that during the first quarter of 2017, J.Crew’s sales dropped 11 percent to $428.5 million. Madewell, J.Crew’s still-shiny little sister brand, saw its own sales increase 17 percent to $84.7 million, but the main brand’s sluggishness dragged down parent company J.Crew Group to a 6 percent decrease in overall revenue.
The last few months have been a time of major change at the company as it wrestles with what it should be to shoppers today. Earlier this month, longtime CEO Mickey Drexler announced that he would be stepping down from his post and becoming chairman of the board. Jenna Lyons, for many years the creative force behind J.Crew and its best spokesmodel, departed in April.
This post has been updated.