Heidi Ekey Copywriter & Content Strategist

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03

Blair · Bluestem Brands

Moving a catalog company off paper

On a catalog page or a product page there is no salesperson — if the copy doesn’t work, nothing happens. Best training a direct-response writer can get.

Role
Copywriter — menswear, then womenswear. E-commerce, email, catalog, naming.
Audience
Established mail-order customers, many of them older, being asked to buy on a screen for the first time.
Dates
October 2013 – January 2022
Disciplines
E-commerce · Direct response · Naming · Brand voice · Print

The assignment

Blair is a multimedia apparel retailer with a long catalog history and a customer base that had bought on paper for decades. The company needed to become digital-first without losing the people who liked the catalog.

I joined a 50-person creative department — writers, designers, producers and in-house studio photographers — and started in menswear. Shaping that brand voice is what earned me the move to womenswear.

Approach

Write for the shelf you don’t have. In direct response the copy is the entire sales floor. It has to do the work a salesperson would: answer the question, handle the objection, and make the fabric feel like something.

Make product pages earn their keep. 300+ e-commerce pages a year, built on keyword research and natural search behavior, with benefit-led narratives rather than spec lists.

Build voice at the brand level, then let it scale. Lifestyle-led narrative systems developed with creative and merchandising leaders — including the Scandia Woods brand boards, which set the outdoor voice for years of catalogs and advertising.

What I delivered

  • Digital and print catalog copy across multiple apparel divisions
  • 300+ SEO-optimized e-commerce pages annually
  • Email programs, landing pages, social, and blog content
  • Product naming, including trademark clearance through TESS/USPTO
  • Neat-Fit® Jeans — a name I wrote and then carried through to registration with the legal team
  • Brand narrative systems and seasonal cover wraps
  • Mentoring on brand voice, copyediting, and proofreading standards

Selected samples

Two Scandia Woods brand-board pages: the Allegheny National Forest brand story and a bank of six headline treatments.
Brand boards. Scandia Woods — the brand story and headline bank, set at brand level. Click to enlarge.
Scandia Woods catalog cover wrap for Fall 2016.
Cover wrap. Fall 2016 — catalog copy doing acquisition work.
Scandia Woods advertisement featuring outdoor apparel.
Brand advertising. Aspirational outdoor copy.
Blair Menswear introduction board: brand statement over a grid of product and model photography.
Menswear board. The Blair Menswear voice — the assignment that earned the womenswear move. Click to enlarge.

Results

  • 20→50%Digital share of sales between 2013 and 2015, as the company moved off catalog.
  • +8%Email click-through rate.
  • +17%Average order value.
  • 300+E-commerce pages written and optimized each year.
  • ®One product name carried from concept through USPTO registration.

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