How to Fly Through Holiday Shopping List

For an increasing number of frequent business fliers, the sky’s no limit when they go holiday shopping.

Indeed, in-flight catalogue shopping has taken off in recent years as the catalogues have changed their image and seat-back telephones have made it easier for passengers to place their orders.

And in the near future, seat-back videos will turn airlines into the latest “home shopping” front.

One Dominant Firm

This holiday season, the two companies in the in-flight catalogue business are reporting increased sales over a year ago.

Phoenix-based Skymall, which has about 82% of the market and offers catalogues on most of the major domestic airlines, expects sales to top $30 million this year. Orders are running about 5,000 a day, double the non-holiday rate.

Amerishop, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., is available only on America West Airlines, but it too is experiencing a lift in holiday orders.

“The people that are shopping are frequent fliers who are too busy to go to the mall,” said Betsy Larson, marketing manager for Skymall. More than 31% of the adult population travels, and with domestic airports serving more than 500 million travelers every year, that’s a huge captive audience, she said. “More people pass through Skymall in 11 days than do a typical shopping mall in an entire year.”

But until recently, the skies represented a relatively untapped marketplace.

In-flight catalogues have been around in one form or another for 25 years, usually hawking overpriced products in the back of flight magazines, Larson said. But sales had been stalled for years.

A Changed Mix

To tap that captive audience, the in-flight catalogue companies have changed their mix of products and services. Skymall got into the business three years ago when it bought out Kay Promotions, a division of Minneapolis-based travel conglomerate Carlson Companies Inc., which until 1990 had contracts with most of the major airlines to do their in-flight merchandising.

Skymall refashioned the business into a contemporary “catalogue of catalogues” offering a collection of brand-name products from familiar mail-order retailers at the same prices passengers would get on the ground.

For example, this season, Skymall features selections from catalogues by Reliable Home Office, Sundance, Lillian Vernon, Sybervision, WordPerfect and Hammacher Schlemmer, among others.

Products range from hand-knit sweaters to leather desk accessories.

The current top sellers, Larson said, are a Harley Davidson motorcycle-shaped phone, available for $89.95 from Hammacher Schlemmer, and a children’s table designed for use with Lego or Duplo locking blocks, also $89.95, from Traveler’s Boutique.

The company targets business travelers by offering instant airport delivery at seven domestic airports: Los Angeles International, Chicago O’Hare International, San Francisco International, Denver Stapleton, Atlanta Hartsfield, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Phoenix Sky Harbor.

It also offers same-day or next-day delivery to office or homes, Larson said.

In addition, some airlines offer frequent-flier miles for ordering from the catalogue, Larson said.

The company also offers a concierge service designed for executive travelers. For prices ranging from $19.95 to $49.95, Skymall will find hotels, cars, gifts or hard-to-get items such as tickets to the Super Bowl or Wimbledon. The company can even arrange to have flowers delivered to a passenger on a plane. To use the concierge service, passengers can either use an in-flight phone or call the company’s toll-free number on the ground.

Skymall’s strategy appears to be working. Its sales have increased fivefold in the last two years. In October, the company began test-marketing a similar service on Amtrak’s East Coast Metroliner Service and New England Express lines, Larson said.

(For more information on Skymall, call (800) 424-6255.)

Amerishop, the other company in the in-flight catalogue business, uses a different approach. Rather than offering existing catalogue merchandise, it produces a catalogue of its own. Amerishop’s primary business is as a corporate merchandising firm handling products for various company awards programs or other types of promotions.

In-flight catalogues are a relatively new segment for the company, but it was a natural step, said Chief Executive Joseph Preston. The company already has a database of more than 60,000 products.

“We get a feel for what’s hot in the market through our suppliers,” Preston said.

One of the company’s perennial top sellers, for example, is a novelty gift item called the Yes Man, which for $24.95 will sit on an executive’s desktop and give only positive feedback.

(For more information on Amerishop, call (616) 949-0775.)

Interactive Video

The biggest growth in in-flight shopping is likely to be seat-back video systems.

Skymall already has software in development for interactive video programming, and Amerishop said it is actively pursuing the video shopping market for airlines.

But Minneapolis-based Northwest Airlines will be the first domestic carrier to actually offer video shopping in the sky.

Developed in conjunction with Los Angeles-based Hughes Avicom, the seven-channel, interactive video stations will be in every seat in eight of Northwest’s 747 aircraft used on Asian flights by early next year, said Dean Haehnel, manager of on-board communications for the airline.

Although other airlines offer video screens, Northwest’s is the first offered by domestic carriers to be interactive, meaning passengers can place orders directly on the screen in front of them.

Two foreign carriers--China Airlines and Virgin Atlantic--are already offering video shopping using Hughes Avicom systems.

So far, Northwest’s system offers four movie channels, Nintendo and a duty-free shopping channel, but the airline plans to offer a home-shopping-type network in the “very near future,” Haehnel said.

“Our Asian routes are 10- to 14-hour flights,” he said. “So you’ve got time to do some shopping.”