Cabela's 2005 Annual Report Download - page 18

retail stores. In fiscal 2005, we mailed more than 121 million catalogs with 80 separate titles to all 50 states and
to more than 185 countries. Our general catalogs range from 300 to 1,438 pages and our specialty catalogs range
from 32 to 240 pages.
Our specialty catalogs offer products focused on one outdoor activity, such as fly fishing, archery or
waterfowl. We carefully analyze our historical sales data and introduce targeted specialty catalogs featuring
product lines that have historically generated sufficient customer interest. For example, as a result of the demand
for workwear apparel and home and cabin merchandise in our general catalogs, we have designed new specialty
catalogs featuring a wide selection of merchandise in those categories.
We use the customer database generated by our direct business to ensure that customers receive catalogs
matching their merchandise preferences, to identify new customers and to cross-sell merchandise to existing
customers. The costs of providing our catalogs continue to increase as postage and printing prices increase. We
utilize our marketing knowledge base to determine optimal circulation strategies to decrease our catalog costs
while continuing to grow our business.
We also market our products through our website which has a number of features, including product
information and ordering capabilities and general information on the outdoor lifestyle. This cost-effective
medium is designed to offer a convenient, highly visual, user-friendly and secure online shopping option for new
and existing customers. Our website was the most visited sports and fitness website in fiscal 2005 according to
Hitwise Incorporated, an online measurement company.
Our website offers all of the merchandise included in our catalogs and contains more extensive product
descriptions and photographs, as well as additional sizes and colors of selected merchandise. In addition to the
ability to order the same products available in our catalogs (including the use of the catalog product identification
number for quick ordering), our website gives customers the ability to purchase gift certificates, research outdoor
activities and choose from other services we provide. Our website also offers discontinued merchandise through
a Bargain Cave link which is advertised in our catalogs.
Our website is our most cost-effective means of offering certain specialized or hard-to-find merchandise that
may not be available through our catalogs or destination retail stores. This allows us to offer rare and highly
specialized merchandise to our customers which enhances our reputation as a leading authority in the outdoor
recreation market. We have agreements to drop-ship specialized merchandise directly from our vendors to our
customers, enabling us to provide unusual, hard-to-ship and hard-to-inventory items, including furniture and
perishables, to our customers without having to physically maintain an inventory of these items at our
distribution centers.
We have been aggressively expanding our e-mail mailing lists as a way to provide inexpensive
communication with customers and as a means to promote our products and our brand. Our promotional e-mails
are customized to meet customers’ shopping preferences and merchandise tastes. We believe that with the
growing number of households with Internet and e-mail access, we can leverage our website to generate more
revenue and connect more frequently with new and existing customers. The number of visits to our website
increased by 37.5% in fiscal 2005 compared to the number of visits in fiscal 2004.
Many of our customers read and browse our catalogs, but order products through our website. Based on our
customer surveys, we believe that our customers wish to continue to receive catalogs even though they purchase
merchandise and services through our website. Accordingly, we remain committed to marketing our products
through our catalog distributions and view our catalogs and the Internet as a unified selling and marketing tool.
We have acquired selected other businesses that comprise a part of our direct business which we believe are
an extension of our core competencies. These businesses include Dunn’s, which offers hunting-dog equipment
and high-end hunting accessories, Van Dyke’s Restorers, which offers home restoration products, Van Dyke’s
Taxidermy, which offers taxidermy supplies, Antique Home and Hardware, which offers home decorating items,
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