Grooming Lounge Blog

The 6th installment of the Grooming Lounge catalog is just about wrapped (we’re targeted to mail them out Nov 1st) and we wanted do a few things:

- Show you a sneak peak of the cover
- Give you the chance to win some stuff
- Tell you in brief how the catalog is created

HERE’S THE COVER

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO WIN SOME STUFF

Take a look at the cover to the left (which took us more than 3 hours to prop and shoot) and send us a list of any 10 products featured on the page.  We’re looking for the full name of each product you choose.  Send your list to groomingguys@groominglounge.com and we’ll randomly pick two correct entries from all we receive and give those lucky readers each a $50 online gift card to www.groominglounge.com.  Must receive all entries by Friday the 25th.

HERE’S HOW THE CATALOG COMES TO BE (SUPER CONDENSED)

The catalog is the centerpiece of our annual marketing campaign and we spend hours and hours and days and weeks on it (our entire team) selecting the products to feature, the feel of the book, the taking of the photos and the writing of the copy. We start with an outline of the products we’ll be introducing and the classics we want to once again feature.  Then, we collaborate with a great creative agency in the NY, NY to determine the “feel” and “look” of the book.  From there, we get every product to be featured sent to the Big Apple, where it gets propped, lit, photographed and edited.  In tandem, we start to write all the corny headlines and informative copy to go along with said photos. Computer design goes from there and then we end up where we are now — tedious hours of proof reading to ensure there are no typos, incorrect prices or worst of all, wrong phone numbers (just try calling our 800# from last year’s installment to see why this is important).

The final steps include compiling all our opt-in addresses (we don’t send these expensive catalogs out to randoms), making sure every guy gets just one, printing the catalogs and then it’s postage time (that’s fun).  This year we expect to send out nearly 50,000 of these suckers.  If you’re not yet on the list, sign up here.

Why a catalog?  Our take is that there’s just some times when men want to be able to sit and read something, rather than scrolling through online pages.  We figure it’s the ultimate bathroom read — one that can be read in that room and can also provide the products and tips to make a man more handsome while there.