Thanks for your comments. I’m pleased to see you’re so happy with our service.

You may be surprised to read that this year’s Spring/Summer catalogue is in fact the biggest spring season catalogue we’ve ever produced – at 164 pages long. Last year and in 2006, our Spring catalogues were 148 pages long. Before that, our Spring catalogues were never any bigger than about 80 pages.

I’m sure by “smaller”, your comparison is with our previous Autumn/Winter catalogues, which are usually in the region of 250 pages. I am mindful that using this comparison, it may perhaps make our spring catalogues look smaller and less significant, although I would say that with different seasons to cater for, they’re not really the same thing. There is far more scope for winter items than summer items in the horse world (clippers, heavy turnouts etc.) and of course, Christmas comes in winter.

So the short answer is “it isn’t smaller” but that’s almost beside the point if enough people feel that our catalogues are shrinking.

That’s sort of the point I was getting at in the blog about evolution. With more than half of all our mail orders coming over the web now, it is quite tempting to print less paper and move the emphasis to our website. There is a lot to be said for the web over paper. We can write more, add more pictures, add video and downloads and give real-time stock information. It’s free to send out, more environmentally friendly and it can be easily amended if we make a mistake.

The one thing a fantastic website can’t easily do that any catalogue can do is say “look at all this”. A nice big catalogue reassures us all that there’s loads of choice in there and that we should take it (and the company who produces it) more seriously. It literally becomes a question of “never mind the quality, feel the width”. In the years to come, our mission is to use the strengths of the web as much as we can without losing any of the credibility that our catalaogues have always given us.

Do you perceive us to have reduced our selection? This is precisely the perception we’re trying to avoid although you’re perfectly entitled to hold it. For us to ensure that we do avoid that perception will require just the kind of “New Thinking” I was talking about.

But as usual your mail order service cannot be faulted.

Living in Aberdeen it is always good to have a reliable source

Kind regards,

Janice