This weekend one of our team members received their Room & Board catalog.  We noticed the message printed on the back of the catalog informing receiptents that they can go to Catalog Choice to opt-out of the catalog mailing.  This is another way how our free service benefits merchants.  They don’t need to build a service to accept opt-out requests - they can just point their customers to our free service.  No more phone calls to customer service just to opt-out.  It is free and easy across the board.  Sorry for the fuzzy image.  If you click the image it will open in a new browser window and you can read the text they used.

We are working on some standard language and a logo that will fit neatly on the back of the catalog.  Until then, feel free to use our mailbox logo or just text as Room & Board has done.

Sam Meers wrote a clear and concise post about Catalog Choice over at his blog “Smoke & Meers”.

Sam states in his post titled A Win/Win/Win:

There are lots of benefits to this idea. First, it just makes sense. If people don’t want a catalog, then they shouldn’t receive it. It will either go in the trash or, if we’re lucky, get recycled, which uses energy that would have never have been needed if the catalog had never been produced and mailed in the first place.

But the thing I love about this idea is that it puts the decision in the hands of the consumer, not the company. And because it is done so well, both the consumer and the company benefit. Consumers get only the catalogs they desire and companies don’t waste money and natural resources sending a catalog to people who will only throw it away.

I raise my glass and toast the founders. Well done!

Sam - our glasses are raised to you, thanks!

Catalog Choice Team

We are at the Annual Conference for Catalog Mailers in Orlando this week.  We regret not having a booth on the exhibit floor, but we are busy meeting with merchants and service providers.  The tenor at this event is much less heated than we experienced at the NEMOA event this spring.  In fact, one active industry blogger reports that: “Attendees overwhelmingly shared with me that they were willing to speak with or work with Catalog Choice — only a few individuals expressed frustration with constant calls from Catalog Choice to accept opt-outs.” Another industry blogger reports: From my vantage point, this socially-green movement is inevitable, has gained critical mass and should be worked with.

From out vantage point, we are seeing the tide shift to more and more companies honoring consumer’s requests to no longer receive a catalog in the mail.  While you may still be getting catalogs that you have opted-out of on this site, rest assured that we are contacting the merchants everyday to get them to honor your requests.  Progress is being made.

Due to an onslaught of SPAM comments on our blog, we have updated the options to only show comments from users that are already have an approved comment.  If you are new commenter on the blog, we want to hear from you. However, there will be a delay before your comments appears on the site.

This is the quote that Alan Rimm-Kaufman uses to introduce a 15 minute Q&A we conducted last week. Alan asked excellent questions and our answers are detailed on his blog. Read the entire interview here.

The interview covers the background leading up to the launch of Catalog Choice, our relationship with merchants and our vision for the future.

Thanks to Alan for conducting the interview. If you are a merchant, I highly recommend that you read it.

Our launch this morning is gathering steam.  We got great posts from the Daily Kos and TechCrunch.  Whether you read left wing political blogs like Daily Kos or follow the Web start-up world through TechCrunch, you will learn about our great new free service.

We did run into a bug when we got hit with lots of concurrent sign-up requests.  The bug is fixed, the sign-ups are flowing in and in a month or two, the catalogs will slow down.   If you ran into the sign-up bug, come on back.