The Treasure Of Her Company
To keep her 1,000-employee company running smoothly, Katz attracts good workers by subsidizing bus service for commuters from the Bronx and offers recruiting incentives for her staff. An employee who brings in a new worker gets $25 if he or she stays 60 working days. Still on the payroll after 90 days? The recruiter gets another $25.That is, of course, until you wake up the baby, who wakes up your partner, who after a lengthy and heated discussion about responsibility, thinking of others, getting up in the morning and other equally dull and pointless topics will give you the silent treatment for the next week to try and teach you a lesson.One day, after all your efforts and investments, you'll receive one of those delicious emails all we experts received once upon a time telling you that you've just made a sale.Some marketers try to merge their two lives - sneakily reading Internet marketing information at the office when they should be doing their job. If you opt to do this just make sure you don't do something silly like putting the PDF about "How To Fire Your Boss" in his intray, while the new sales figures get taken home for your bedtime reading.This is how Katz got her start. She made her name in other people's initials.Remember - a lap is either something done by a lycra-clan athlete at the Olympics or a pvc-clad dancer in a seedy bar."Many people tried to talk me out of the business. Sam Hochberg, my first husband, treated it like a hobby. I felt it was very important to me because it was mine, and it gave me a wonderful sense of independence.'Indeed the best definition of a newbie Internet marketer is someone who spends all day slogging their guts out at a job they hate to earn a few dollars, only to come home and spend the entire night on the Internet getting fleeced for it by people smarter than themselves.Lillian Katz is in her office today because she is not in China. She is not in China because she broke her ankle. She is also in her office --wearing high heels that are perilous for someone at her stage of recovery --because her doctor did not reckon with his patient's personality.It's a sad fact that newbie Internet marketers come in only two styles - those with money to burn and those who have been in the game for more than a few days.NeXT wins BusinesslandThis, however, has the opposite effect as it gives you even more time to spend on the Internet as you don't have to try and look interested in talking to your partner.Indeed it's not long before you find yourself working twice as hard as you ever did before you got into marketing and ending up with half the money you had before.The other is an Internet browser. This is a device for viewing popup windows, and allowing your partner to see you've really been looking at porn all evening rather than finishing off that report from work you told her about.This may be either a desktop - so called because it is used on a desk. Or a laptop - so called because it's also used on a desk because it becomes so hot within moments of turning it on that it will take the skin off your legs if you tried using it on your lap.Casual catalog shoppers may not know Lillian Katz--but they probably know her Lillian Vernon Corporation. Katz's $137-million-sales company, which she named after herself and its hometown, Mt. Vernon, N.Y., collects and sells colorful knickknacks made of plastic, cotton, glass, wood or porcelain. Mainly, the company markets nifty solutions to problems so trivial that you may have given them little thought before looking through its catalog.Internet marketers live a strange double-life working during the day at their job and running their business at night, hoping some day to be able to quit the job altogether.Parental controls are of course available to limit what can be viewed online but generally the parents soon get annoyed with the limitations so their children have to unlock it."The doctor took the cast off two weeks ahead of schedule because her ankle is mending quickly,' says her secretary, Geri Harty. "Knowing how Lillian is, he should have kept the cast on four more weeks, just to keep her from trying to do too much.'It's a bit like going out with Paris Hilton as opposed to the ugly fat bird with the lisp and the lazy eye that you see down your street sometimes (generally known as your "wife").In addition to a manufacturing plant in Providence, which makes the company's brass items, Katz has buying offices in Italy and Hong Kong. Of the 850 items in each of her 10 yearly catalogs, 55 to 60 percent are imported. She would do more business with American manufacturers, she says, if they were as accommodating as foreign manufacturers in handling her requests. She says the foreigners are more likely than Americans to adjust the color on this coffee mug and produce more of that flannel sheet, for instance.Katz says the pain is distracting, but there is no trace of a limp as she gets to the wheelchair behind her desk.Also good for the company is Katz's intuition about good employees. Take Ray Slyper. With little more than a high school diploma and a few years' experience at another mail-order company, she was hired to help with mailing list rentals. Katz soon felt that Slyper was capable of managing the company's mailing list operations. Slyper thought she was not, without the aid of outside list brokers. When she finally gave in, and mailing list management was brought totally inhouse, under her, Lillian Vernon's sales doubled in one year. A few years later, Slyper was made a vice president.
Also good for the company is Katz's intuition about good employees. Take Ray Slyper. With little more than a high school diploma and a few years' experience at another mail-order company, she was hired to help with mailing list rentals. Katz soon felt that Slyper was capable of managing the company's mailing list operations. Slyper thought she was not, without the aid of outside list brokers. When she finally gave in, and mailing list management was brought totally inhouse, under her, Lillian Vernon's sales doubled in one year. A few years later, Slyper was made a vice president.
Author: Martha I. Finney
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