1. business and industrial
2. advertising and marketing
3. marketing

The importance
of paper at one of
Germanys leading
E-Commerce
players
Alexander Voges
Barcelona, March 17th, 2015
Agenda
A. Otto Group: Globally active Group of companies
B. OTTO: The Flagship of the Otto Group
C.
The role of Paper: Changing from Sales Channel to
Marketing Instrument
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
It all started in 1949 with a 14 page handmade catalogue offering
shoes…
• On August 17th 1949 Werner Otto
founded a mailorder company
• He started with three employees in
Hamburg Schnelsen.
• The first catalogue had a circulation of
300
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
... and is today a globally active group of 123 companies in the areas
Multichannel Retail, Logistics und Financial Services
€ 12 bn €. Net
Sales
100 online shops
# 1 in fashion und
lifestyle E-Commerce
(B2C)
in Europe
400 retail
stores
54,257
employees
# 2 worldwide in
B2C ECommerce
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Investments in
Startups by
e.ventures and
Project A
Otto Group is globally successful in e-commerce
Germany
North America
South America
Russia
Europe
Asia
Majority shareholdings
of
Otto Group
Minority shareholdings
of
Otto Group
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Multi-Channel Retail Sales are mainly generated by our
Commerce activities…
E-Commerce Sales
2014/2015 Otto Group worldwide
6,3 bn
EUR
E-Commerce share
of total Sales
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
E-
E-Commerce Sales
2014/2015 Otto Group Germany
4,1 bn
EUR
61%
E-Commerce share
total Sales
of
66%
…which are clustered in three strategic areas
Online-
Pure-Plays
Multichannel-
Brands
Venture Capital
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Agenda
A. Otto Group: Globally active Group of companies
B. OTTO: The Flagship of the Otto Group
C.
The role of Paper: Changing from Sales Channel to
Marketing Instrument
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
OTTO is the „Flagship“ of the group and market leader in
Fashion und Lifestyle in Germany
▪ More than 2 Mio. articles and 5.200
brands
▪ Up to 40.000 visits simultaniously
▪ More than 300 milion visits a year
▪ 25.000 clics per minute on average
▪ 10 orders per Second at peak times
▪ ca. 700 T Facebook-Fans
▪ >80% Onlineshare of Total sales
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Growing importance of E-Commerce in German society
2000
50%
of Germans
can imagine shopping oonline
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
2014
more than 90%
of Germans
can imagine shopping online
Everywhere-Commerce: Responsive Design for otto.de
Desktop PC
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Tablet
Mobile Phone
Agenda
A. Otto Group: Globally active Group of companies
B. OTTO: The Flagship of the Otto Group
C.
The role of Paper: Changing from Sales Channel to
Marketing Instrument
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Different target groups are addressed via different sales
channels
Ø 25 years
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Ø 39 years
Ø 44 years
OTTO publishes around 120 different catalogues a year
from leaflets and flyer to the 1.000 page big book
▪ More than 1.800 different
catalogues published
p.a. in the Otto Group
▪ OTTO publishes around
120 different catalogues
p.a.
▪ 1.000 page Main Book
with a circulation of
nearly 4 million
▪ 35 billion circulated
pages are published by
OTTO each year
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Catalogues fulfill different roles for Otto and are used in
customer acquisition as well as activation
Main Book
• Long lifetime: 6 months
• > 1000
pages
• Twice a year
• Compendium
of OTTO‘s
offer
Seasonal Cat.
•lifetime:
1-2 months
• 300-400 pages
•4 x a year
•Spring, Summer,
Autumn, Winter
•Seasonal
assortment
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges udates
Impulse Cat.
•Short livetime:
2-4 weeks
• 80-120 pages
• 16x a year
•Frequent
assortment
updates
•Customer
activation and
acquisition
Target Group Cat.
• livetime varies
•24 -300 pages
• 2-4 x a year
• Skimming
target group
potentials
The function of the catalogue has changed - catalogues
become a marketing instrument
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Changing Role of Print: From a mere sales channel to a part of the
customer journey
Traditional role of catalogues
•Direct Sales from
catalogues
•Activation /
Acquisition of
Customers
•Inspiration and
Information of
customers
New role of catalogues
•Activation
•Inspiration
•Marketing
Impulse
•Order and
buying process
at otto.de
One element of
the customer
journey
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Push towards otto.de
Catalogues have become become a source of inspiration
and push customers towards otto.de
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Catalogue design needs to change to transform the role of
catalogues toward inspiration
Generating sales through catalogues
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
Inspiration through catalogues
The transformateion of Print brings some strategic challenges for
OTTO
➢ Reinventing the role of Paper:
Developing inspirational Print formats that adress new
customer segments beyond the classical mail order
customer
➢ Measuring the success:
With catalogues being one of several touchpoints in
the customer journey the measurement of the
success of catalogues gets more challenging
Challenges…..
OTTO GmbH & Co KG, Alexander Voges
➢ Learned success factors need to be reworked:
Learned catalogue success factors like number of
items per page are not valid in the new role paper
has.
Thank you very much
for your attention!