What's the secret to avoiding decline in a tough market?

We recently visited with Laura Bruck, Vice President of Marketing and Customer Relations for Raymond Geddes about trends in the education market. Laura indicated that for the first time in many years, the education division at Raymond Geddes has been outperforming the retail division. She said, "The school side of our business has looked strong for several months. During a previous recession, I worked at a company in the education market and when the economy was down, our business held steady."

While schools are not immune from swings in the economy, they are more stable (recession resistant) than businesses. As business owners look at revenue declines of 30%, 40%, or more, schools are insulated from that same pressure because they are funded by local, state, and federal government sources. Bruck noted that the Raymond Geddes sales model for schools is very different than the model used in the retail division. During a recent interview with Patrick Barnard of Multichannel Merchant, Laura said that the marketing team had made adjustments to their product mix and mail plan. In addition, they've been working on optimizing search engine results. Compared to the fall of 2007, Geddes has experienced a 128% increase in new visitors to the website and business generated via the Web grew from 40% to 60%.

Bruck said, "The economic slide will probably affect school budgets at some point but for now we're thrilled that we're achieving growth in the present market."