Eastern Storage Equipment debuts catalogue

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.