Information Systems Management

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Lessons Learned from an Initial E-Commerce

Failure by A Catalog Retailer

Dien D. Phan, Jim Q. Chen & Sohel Ahmad

To cite this article: Dien D. Phan, Jim Q. Chen & Sohel Ahmad (2005) Lessons Learned from an
Initial E-Commerce Failure by A Catalog Retailer, Information Systems Management, 22:3, 7-13,
DOI: 10.1201/1078/45317.22.3.20050601/88740.2

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E-BUSINESS

LESSONS LEARNED
FROM AN INITIAL
E-COMMERCE FAILURE
BY A CATALOG RETAILER
DIEN D. PHAN is a
professor in the
Business Computer Dien D. Phan, Jim Q. Chen, and Sohel Ahmad
Information Systems
Department, St. Cloud As companies rushed into E-commerce in the late 1990s, many predicted that existing catalog
State University, MN. retailers would have a natural advantage over physical store retailers. However, confusing mar-
He holds an M.B.A. ket signals and incorrect management assumptions led to some poor decisions. This article
from the University of explores what went wrong with a successful catalog retailer, Fingerhut Inc., as it initially
Minnesota and a Ph.D. embraced E-commerce in the late 1990s, and some of the lessons learned.
from the University of
Arizona.

JIM Q. CHEN is a HE R A P I D P R O L I F E R AT I O N O F This article explores what went wrong.

professor in the
Business Computer
Information Systems
T E-commerce and rising values of many
E-commerce companies in the 1990s
First we discuss E-commerce concepts and the
visions that evolved. Then we introduce the
convinced many observers that a new case of Fingerhut and some of its competitive
Department, St. Cloud
State University. He
economy had emerged. However, the emer- strengths prior to its initial entry into
holds a B.S. degree gence of this new economy brought many risks E-commerce. We end the article with a discus-
from Xian University as well as opportunities. Scholars and business sion of lessons learned and an update on Fin-
of Technology, China, people alike feared that the price and cost gerhut’s resurrection.
an M.B.A. from transparencies would harm prices and brands
Northern Illinois and make it difficult for traditional companies
University, and a EVOLVING E-COMMERCE CONCEPTS
to survive (Bakos, 1997; Sinha, 2000).
Ph.D. from University In response to the hype and perceived AND VISIONS
of Nebraska at threats, many existing business organizations As technology advanced and the E-commerce
Lincoln. market developed and grew, market niches
redesigned their processes, shifted strategies,
SOHEL AHMAD is a and entered new partnerships. Some emerged opened and closed frequently. As a niche
professor in the successfully, while many others failed. opened up to take advantage of a technology
Management The purpose of this article is to focus on a innovation, enterprises competed to take ad-
Department, St. Cloud catalog retailer: Fingerhut Inc. Pundits predict- vantage of cost savings and first mover advan-
State University. He ed that catalog mail-order telephone-order tages that often result in better market
holds a B.S.M.E. from penetration and profits. At the beginning of the
(MOTO) retailers would have a natural advan-
Bangladesh Institute E-commerce evolution, the potential of online
tage when entering online business because of
of Technology, a
the similar business approach, such as no phys- business was so great that many believed
M.S.I.E. from The
University of Alabama, ical retail stores and efficient order fulfillment E-commerce models would determine the suc-
and a Ph.D. from the centers (Turban et al., 2004). However, Finger- cess of the retailing industry. In particular, on-
University of hut, the second largest MOTO company in 1998, line retailers were perceived as threats to price,
Minnesota-Twin initially failed after it entered E-commerce in brands, and traditional ways of competing in
Cities. 1999. the retail industry. For example, Evans and
I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M S
S U M M E R 2 0 0 5
M A N A G E M E N T
7
 E-BUSINESS
Wursters (2000) predicted the demise, literally
“blown to bits,” of traditional retailers as online
companies replaced them. The basic premises
for this prediction were:
❚ Price and cost transparency. Because vast
T
information about prices and costs are avail-
he hype able on the Web, the cost of searching for
prices, product information, and transac-
that had fueled tions would fall drastically.As a consequence,
the growth of consumers would use the Web to shop for
E-commerce products at lowest costs. It was assumed that
Web consumers were rational and cost
indeed created driven. As more consumers shop online, only
opportunities low-cost, high-quality online retailers survive.
for strong ❚ Lower costs of operations. It was assumed
that the entry costs to the online retail mar-
brick-and- ket were much less than those of traditional
mortar brick-and-mortar retail stores because online
companies to stores would not need physical stores and
warehouses. With the continuous decline in
expand into technology costs, the cost of building online
click-and- stores would fall further over time.
mortar ❚ Disintermediation. In some industries, man-
ufacturers and distributors would sell mer-
companies. chandise directly to customers online,
reduce prices and costs, and eliminate inter-
mediaries. As a consequence, traditional
retail stores, as intermediaries, would be
replaced by the Web.
❚ Profits. Low price and disintermediation
would make it difficult for traditional brick-
and-mortar stores to make profits, and they
would be forced out of business. New online
stores such as Amazon.com would replace
traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
Ultimately, these threats to traditional brick-
and-mortar retail stores proved to be greatly ex-
aggerated. By 2000, traditional brick-and-mor-
tar companies continued to dominate the
marketplace while numerous online retailers
had failed.The hype that had fueled the growth
of E-commerce indeed created opportunities
for strong brick-and-mortar companies to ex-
pand into click-and-mortar companies.
As the surviving traditional companies be-
gan to reassess their E-commerce visions,
Michael Porter (2001) argued that to stay com-
petitive, the key question was not whether to
deploy technology to enter E-commerce, but
how to deploy it. Traditional businesses could
achieve a sustainable competitive advantage via
the Internet by using the new technologies to
improve their operational effectiveness and
their strategic positioning. That is, Internet
technologies could be used as a “complement
to” rather than a “cannibal of” traditional ways.
8 W W W . I S M - J O U R N A L . C O M
S U M M E R 2 0 0 5
Furthermore, applications of E-commerce are
not stand-alone technologies; they must be in-
tegrated into the company’s overall business
value chain model (Porter, 1985).
Today’s E-marketplace thus has several new
characteristics (Laudon and Traver, 2004):
❚ Traditional companies were not always hurt
by the impacts of price and cost transparen-
cies. Online shoppers are not necessarily
cost driven, and can be sensitive to brand
names and quality.
❚ Intermediaries continue to play an important
role in both physical and online retail trade,
and many new intermediaries have emerged.
❚ Online businesses focus on earnings and
profits, not just revenue growth.
❚ Many brick-and-mortar companies have suc-
cessfully expanded into online retailing to
become click-and-mortar companies, and
continue to dominate their markets.
❚ New laws and regulations have emerged to
fuel the growth of E-commerce and protect
the public.
However, not all click-and-mortar firms
were initially successful in E-commerce. One of
the early visible failures was Fingerhut Inc., a
catalog mail-order company that by 1998 had
revenues of $1.9 billion. Given the authors’
geographic proximity to the company’s past
and current headquarters, the case study analy-
sis in this article is based on various opportuni-
ties to gather information from corporate
speakers, company presentations, press confer-
ences, the local media, as well as interviews
with former employees.
FINGERHUT INC.
Fingerhut Inc. opened its doors in 1948 to sell
automobile seat covers in Minneapolis, Minne-
sota. In 1949, it entered the mail-order business
and began direct marketing car seat covers to
car owners with extended payments and free
gifts. In 1957, it expanded into selling general
merchandise via catalog mail order. In 1960,
Fingerhut moved its operations to St. Cloud,
Minnesota.As early as 1975, Fingerhut began to
exploit the capabilities of information technol-
ogy to gain competitive advantages and devel-
oped sophisticated credit screening and
consumer buying pattern analysis systems. It
was acquired by American Can Company in
1979. With its sophisticated database market-
ing capabilities, it began to offer deferred pay-
ment plans to attract new customers and
extended credit to existing customers in 1981.
 E-BUSINESS
TABLE 1 Fingerhut’s Five-Year Earnings before Acquisition
For the fiscal year ended Dec. 26, 1997 Dec. 27, 1996
Revenues (in thousands) $1,798,617 $1,762,865
Earnings before income taxes (in thousands) $120,871
Net earnings (in thousands) $69,329
Source: Form 10-K.
Revenues reached $1 billion in 1988; and in
1990, Fingerhut Inc. went public with 6.3 mil-
lion shares of stock. In 1995, Fingerhut began
order fulfillment contracts for Infochoice and
Montgomery Ward Direct. That year, about 25
million packages were shipped, and Fingerhut
became the second largest catalog mail-order
company in the United States with $1.8 billion
in revenues (Table 1).
One of Fingerhut’s competitive advantages
was its strategic positioning. It had successfully
targeted customers in the “sub-prime” credit
market serving low credit customers who
needed extra credit to buy. These customers
were willing to pay a premium for the extra
buying power. Fingerhut introduced a so-called
closed-end credit coupon system that allowed
its customers to make installment payments.
In addition, Fingerhut had a vast data min-
ing capability that enabled it to analyze data on
buying habits and demographics to pinpoint
products that might interest consumers. With
this capability, Fingerhut could quickly answer
questions such as how much a certain group of
customers would spend and who would be
likely to pay their debts.
At Fingerhut’s peak, as many as 200 analysts
and 40 statisticians mined the database for in-
sights that helped the company differentiate it-
self from competitors and maintain its unique
value proposition. They helped Fingerhut spot
consumer shopping patterns and bring rele-
vant product offerings at attractive prices to
the customers who were going to be most in-
terested.The faster its marketers could identify
significant new patterns in behavior, the faster
Fingerhut could reach customers with the right
offerings at the right time.
For example, Fingerhut published about 25
different catalogs, but shipped only the general
merchandise catalog monthly and then tracked
customers’ buying patterns and behaviors. If a
customer bought cookware, Fingerhut would
first follow up with specialized Cooks’ Book
and More Houseware & Cooking Supplies
I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M S
S U M M E R
Dec. 29, 1995 Dec. 30, 1994 Dec. 31, 1993
$1,814,853 $1,699,772 $1,652,244
$64,991 $76,306 $70,926 $111,879
$40,159 $50,858 $45,925 $75,328
catalogs. Then telemarketers would call to fol-
low up with new products. The database mar-
keting program worked well and the company
had a very high rate of repeat purchases: about
80 percent of the company’s sales came from
repeat buyers.
Through customer data mining, Fingerhut
also found that customers who recently
changed their residence were likely to triple
their purchasing in the twelve weeks after their
move, with a peak in buying in the first four
weeks. Their selections also often followed a
pattern — new furniture, telecommunications
equipment, and home decorations, but seldom
jewelry or home electronics. The company
used this discovery to tailor a new “mover’s cat-
alog” to entice customers who recently moved.
Because of the large dollar values, the high
profit margins, and the effectiveness of its data
mining, Fingerhut initiated significant efforts to
sell furnishings and appliances to customers
who had just moved. By 1998, its warehouses
were full of appliances and furnishings.
Supporting Fingerhut operations were two
IBM 390 mainframes running MVS, a Hitachi
multiprocessor supercomputer, 274 Sun work-
stations, and over 500 Windows NT servers, all
connected via a distributed network. The data
warehouse was operated in the UNIX Sun envi-
ronment. The 7-terabyte Oracle database could
crunch up to 2000 variables about a single cus-
tomer. The data warehouse contained informa-
tion on about 71 million customers who made
at least one purchase. Each customer had a pro-
file with numerous attributes.
This company has focused on refining
brilliantly simplistic insight to precisely
target the audiences that may want your
products,” said Andy Johnson, SVP of
market development. “We’ve never
done business without some form of da-
tabase marketing. It’s the heart and soul
of this company, and we wouldn’t be in
business without it (Pearson, 1998).
2 0 0 5
M A N A G E M E N T
9
 E-BUSINESS
Fingerhut’s Entry into E-Commerce
By the end of 1998, Fingerhut management
was convinced that E-commerce was the new
way to grow its business. Seeing rapid revenue
growth and soaring stock prices of online re-
tailers such as Amazon.com and AOL.com, Fin-
F ingerhut
gerhut management wanted to copy their
successes and remake Fingerhut into an
struggled with E-commerce player.
implementing In the spring of 1998, Fingerhut hired Will-
iam Lansing, a business development manager
the technology from General Electric Co., as the new president
it needed to be of Fingerhut. The goals were to launch the on-
a major line retail operations and boost catalog sales.
Lansing started an E-tailing site called The-
E-commerce
Hut.com and bought minority stakes in other
player. E-commerce sites, including PC Flowers and
Gift, MountainZone.com, and FreeShop.com.
Between August and November 1998, he also
acquired other catalog retailers such as Arizona
mail order and Popular Club. To further boost
sales, Fingerhut offered credit cards to riskier
customers and accelerated its credit rollout
schedule, giving cards to 4 million customers
in two years instead of the previously sched-
uled three years. Revenues soared to $1.9 bil-
lion and Fortune magazine named Fingerhut
one of the “10 companies that get it” in 1999.
“Our business is now the Internet. Fast-
forward two years and we’ll be one of
the big five players doing retailing
there.”
— William Lansing, Fingerhut President
(as quoted in Warner, 1999)
Fingerhut’s E-commerce objectives also in-
cluded building a value proposition that pro-
vided value-added services to existing mail and
telephone order customers. The specific goals
were as follows (Docherty, 2000):
❚ Leveraging existing order fulfillment and
data mining expertise in E-marketplaces
❚ Shifting from traditional mail and telephone
orders to more interactive and personal
shopping experiences through the Web
❚ Shifting from traditional company-centric
“telling and selling” marketing to Web-based,
customer-centric “listening and suggesting”
marketing based on consumer buying pat-
terns
❚ Storing customer E-wallets or profiles in a
customer relationship management (CRM)
system
❚ Allowing customers better control during
the purchase process
10 W W W . I S M - J O U R N A L . C O M
S U M M E R 2 0 0 5
❚ Giving customers more buying power
through Fingerhut’s extended credit prod-
ucts that were not available at other online
retailers
However, as Fingerhut moved forward with
more acquisitions and orders, its information
technology failed to keep pace, although plans
were in place to upgrade the Oracle database
with an IBM DB2 running in an IBM multipro-
cessor supercomputer (Pearson, 1998). “The
infrastructure was always a-step-and-half be-
hind,” said a former Fingerhut executive (Bern-
er, 2000).
Federated’s Acquisition and
Liquidation of Fingerhut
In 1999, Federated Department Stores ac-
quired Fingerhut for $1.7 billion as part of its
expansion into E-commerce. Lansing was pro-
moted to be the head of Federated Direct,
which included the Internet operations of Fin-
gerhut and most Internet operations of Federat-
ed. He launched additional Web retailer sites,
made more investments in Internet start-ups,
and received order fulfillment contracts with 22
companies, including eToys and Walmart.com.
However, Fingerhut struggled with imple-
menting the technology it needed to be a major
E-commerce player. In particular, it needed re-
liable systems to support its order fulfillment
processes (Figure 1). To overcome problems
caused by lack of integration between its front-
office and back-office systems, Fingerhut devel-
oped Fingerhut Logistics Software (FLS). Unfor-
tunately, the FLS application had a lot of bugs
that caused order fulfillment problems, such as
lost orders, shipment delays, and shipments of
incomplete orders. When large waves of orders
from the Web overloaded its processing capaci-
ty, the systems crashed. Because the software
did not always accurately track inventory,
Fingerhut did not have accurate numbers of
stock on hand. In some instances, Fingerhut re-
ceived fulfillment orders from customers of val-
ue-chain partners for items that it did not have
in stock. In other instances, the orders took so
long to assemble at Fingerhut that its Web part-
ners had to pay for express shipments.
Fingerhut’s expansion plans ran into mas-
sive problems over the Christmas 1999 selling
season. A toy retailer (eToys) that had contract-
ed Fingerhut to fill and deliver orders suffered
numerous order problems, such as incomplete
order shipments and late delivery of Christmas
gift items. By February 2000, eToys terminated
its contract with Fingerhut (Sogini, 2000).
 E-BUSINESS
FIGURE 1 Key Order Fulfillment Processes
Order Placement
- Product Availability
- Lead Time
Feedback and Knowledge Acquisition for Continuous Improvement
Many other companies that had hired Finger-
hut to fulfill orders also terminated their con-
tracts. By the end of 2000, the number of
contracts to fill orders at Fingerhut had
dropped from 22 to 8.
Fingerhut sales dipped significantly in 2000
and 2001, contributing to Federated’s $795 mil-
lion in losses from sales. The aggressive exten-
sion of credit to riskier customers also caused
up to $400 million in losses on unpaid credit.
In addition to these heavy losses, Federated’s
stock price dropped as investors became ner-
vous about online retailers in general. To turn
the business around, Federated tightened credit
standards and closed many of the Web sites that
Fingerhut had launched earlier. In the spring of
2002, Federated closed the entire Fingerhut
business.
LESSONS LEARNED
As E-commerce has evolved, new visions and
paradigms have emerged. The lessons learned
from the initial failure of Fingerhut reinforce
the argument that prior success in a mail-or-
der catalog business does not guarantee suc-
cess in online E-commerce.That is, experience
in order fulfillment and ample warehouse ca-
pacity do not automatically translate into suc-
cess in an online business. Three of the IT-
related risks that caused problems for Finger-
hut as it evolved its clicks-and-mortar capabili-
ties are as follows:
1. Abandoning existing competitive advan-
tages in the deployment of E-commerce.
Before its entry into E-commerce, Fingerhut’s
main competitive advantage was its strategic
positioning, which included a set of “sub-
prime” customers. However, the demo-
graphics of their online customers were not
the same as that of sub-prime customers. By
abandoning its strategic positioning for new
I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M S
S U M M E R
Order Preparation Order Delivery
- Resource Scheduling - Transport Availability
- Capacity Cushion - Cube Utilization
online customers, Fingerhut floundered.
Fingerhut’s management also failed to ade-
quately analyze the ability to sustain com-
petitive advantages of the many online
businesses in which it invested. Fingerhut’s
mana gement lacked knowledge in
E-commerce and thus was not able to distin-
guish between good E-commerce players
and the pretenders.
2. Inadequate order fulfillment systems.
Because E-commerce requires linkages
between front-office and back-offices oper-
ations within the supply chain, well-inte-
grated order fulfillment systems are crucial.
To maintain quality of service, a backup
order fulfillment system may also be
needed to temporarily handle orders until
problems with a back-office system are
fixed.
3. Data mining capabilities for online retail-
ing. Fingerhut already had an established
data mining capability for its traditional cus-
tomers, which it considered to be a strate-
gic weapon, but did not initially invest in
this capability for online customers. With
data mining capabilities, a firm can quickly
pinpoint products that may interest con-
sumers and find out how much a certain
group of customers would spend. Further-
more, a company can look for opportuni-
ties to serve its customers’ entire credit
buying life, from the time they are still in
school until their retirement. Starting with
credit purchases for “sub-prime” customers
who have no or very little income and poor
credit, retailers can tailor product offerings
to their needs. Then they can decide when
to upgrade or graduate “sub-prime” custom-
ers to a higher income (“prime”) market
with high-price, high-quality products
served by value-chain partners. The deci-
sion must be just-in-time to lure existing
2 0 0 5
M A N A G E M E N T
11
 E-BUSINESS
customers to the value-chain partners and
preempt them from switching to other
high-end merchants.
Data mining capabilities are also crucial for
online retailing. The companies that estab-
lished affiliations with Amazon.com (e.g., Toys-
Rus.com in the past and physical store retailers
such as Target and Marshall Fields) are exam-
ples of how companies can leverage data col-
lected from online customers by partnering
with a dot.com company with a trusted brand.
This approach also potentially supports life-cy-
cle marketing: as young consumers grow up,
they gradually spend less time shopping for
toys and games at Toys “R” Us and spend more
time shopping for books, CDs, and other goods
sold by Target and Marshall Fields.
FINGERHUT RESURRECTED
During the summer of 2002, FAC Acquisitions
Inc. (founded by Petters Group president Tom
Petters and former Fingerhut CEO Ted Deikel)
repurchased Fingerhut’s remaining assets from
Federated (which included the customer data-
base and distribution centers in St.Cloud, Min-
nesota and Tennessee). In November, Fingerhut
Direct Marketing was launched as a private
company. With the goal for the online business
to be available in time for the holiday shopping
season, Fingerhut outsourced the E-commerce
development project to Microsoft. The entire
E-commerce system was completed within six
weeks, using off-the-shelf components; and by
the end of 2002, more than 90,000 transactions
were completed (Microsoft, 2003).
In April 2003, the new Fingerhut received
its first contract to fill orders for uBid.com.The
increased sales allowed Fingerhut to reopen an-
other call center in Eveleth, Minnesota, in Au-
gust 2003. For the year 2003, Fingerhut mailed
5 million specialty catalogs to customers, em-
ployed more than 400 people, and saw sales
revenues reach $140 million. In 2004, Finger-
hut Direct named Paul Hanson the new CIO
and secured an additional $63 million of equity.
The new Fingerhut company is reportedly pur-
suing the goal of serving customers for their en-
tire buying life cycle, from the time of low
income and low credit through the move into
better income and credit level.
Today, Fingerhut is back in business on a
much smaller and more humble scale. It has
achieved some early successes in its reentry to
online business, after taking a calculated risk
on a very short system development cycle. Tra-
ditional software engineering wisdom says that
12 W W W . I S M - J O U R N A L . C O M
S U M M E R 2 0 0 5
a thorough analysis, design, and quality assur-
ance for large enterprise systems is required
(Phan et al., 1995), because the costs of quality
and maintenance traditionally far exceed the
savings of not doing thorough front-end work
and quality assurance. Yourdon (1997) has
even called these short development cycle
projects a “death march.” However, the devel-
opment team for Fingerhut Direct justified the
use of an extremely short development cycle
and bypassed many front-end and testing tasks
because the risks from missing the Christmas
season of 2002 were even greater.
CONCLUSIONS
With rapid advances in technology, enterprises
today frequently are faced with the need to re-
design their processes in ways that sustain and
improve their competitive advantage. Howev-
er, gaining competitive advantage requires
building on proven and effective strategies by
achieving operational efficiency and strategic
positioning.
At the beginning of the E-commerce evolu-
tion, the negative effects of bad management
decisions were masked by distorted market sig-
nals and the burgeoning of the E-commerce in-
dustry. Today, the consequences of management
missteps are more evident. Although the initial
E-commerce failure of Fingerhut can be attrib-
uted to some traditional management prob-
lems, the lack of knowledge in E-commerce
and the lack of initial IT investments to support
its new E-commerce strategies were the major
causes for the unexpected initial failure of this
traditional catalog retailer. ▲
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