How to Design And Print A Business Product Catalogue

A product catalogue holds more than meets the eye. This printed parcel of marketing material is not only an effective way to communicate your products and ideas to your audience, but it can also be a vessel of creativity that furthers your brand’s story and tells the reader who you are as a business. From small-business owners to major corporations, here at FolioFox, we know well that an accessible, unique and effective product catalogue is a vital piece of marketing. Let’s take a closer look at how you can print the best product catalogue for your business, and the design tips that will enhance it further.

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What To Know Before You Get Started On Your Product Catalogue

Before you even begin the process of designing and printing the perfect product catalogue for your business, there are a few important factors to note. Bland product catalogues that have been copied-and-pasted will be pretty ineffective in reaching your audience and communicating your purpose, so it’s good to understand what makes your business unique from the get-go, and how to implement this into the printed product.

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First thing’s first: understand the purpose of your printed product catalogue. Are you a fashion brand offering a sneak-peak of a lookbook into an upcoming collection, or maybe a small business that sells office supplies to other businesses? Whatever it is you’re marketing to your audience, you’ll want to design and print a product catalogue that is in line with your brand and what you’re selling, and to do so in the most accessible way possible. 

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With this understanding comes the knowledge of who your audience is and what attracts them as a consumer. A clothes shopper looking to splash some cash on some wintery threads for the upcoming season will be drawn to a completely different kind of product catalogue design compared to a business looking to purchase supplies related to their professional industry. 

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Which Printed Product Catalogue Design Is Best For Your Business?

Now onto the fun part - designing an effective product catalogue. There are plenty of ways to approach the design of your catalogue - so much of it depends on what kind of brand you are, and what type of products you’re marketing to what audience. Come with us as we dive into the different formats your product catalogue can take.

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One of the most common kinds of product catalogues you might come across in your day-to-day life is the classic retail product catalogue. This sales catalogue is a nifty marketing tool for brands to summarise their products with their corresponding prices, descriptions, specifications and images all in one place. This is a great tool for showcasing the products you have on offer to your audience, especially if your audience is a large demographic of consumers. Sometimes these sales catalogues are campaign-specific - for example, organised and themed in correspondence with a specific brand awareness campaign by the business - or maybe seasonal, in which the focus is on an upcoming season of correlated products, like a spring and summer collection of clothes or a Christmas-specific festive catalogue.

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Similar to a retail product catalogue is the lookbook. This image-focused printed catalogue is incredibly effective for fashion-specific brands as they are used to not just showcase products to their potential buyers, but also how their products can be worn and combined with additional products to create a branded ‘look’. The beauty of the lookbook is that it can be designed quite creatively. Luxury fashion brands craft lookbooks that feel more like magazines or small coffee table books, offering their audience not just a piece of printed marketing material,  but also something stylish that holds aesthetic value and can be displayed in one’s home.

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Ordinary product catalogues can be made extraordinary by also leaning more into the format of a magazine. Some ways to design a more finessed product catalogue can be by utilising either an editorial catalogue theme or a brand-led catalogue theme. An editorial catalogue is a hybrid between a magazine and a product catalogue, with the showcasing of the products achieved through storytelling means. This could be through articles, photography series, interviews or essays. Similarly, brand-led product catalogues utilise storytelling as a tool to position not only the products at hand but also the brand and the ethos behind it. This is an effective way to demonstrate your business’ story and products if you’re new to the market, with the focus more on establishing and selling the brand than the products themselves.

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Another common type of product catalogue format is the business-to-business (B2B) product catalogue, also known as a wholesale catalogue. This differs quite a lot from the other kinds of catalogues as you’re not selling to a consumer, instead you’re selling your products directly to a business. This means that there should be a clear focus on business specifics - like product names, fabrics, sizings, minimum order quantities, prices and delivery information - and less emphasis on the product’s design frills.

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Tips For Printing The Perfect Product Catalogue

Now that you’ve designed an amazing product catalogue for your business, it’s time to get it printed. Here at Fox, we can print your product catalogue with a range of various specifications, from differing paper types and finishes to considerations of binding your catalogue together.

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When it comes to selecting the right binding for your product catalogue, you’ve got a few options to choose from. Saddle-stitch binding is a common kind of binding that is used for crafting catalogues. This method is most cost-effective when a catalogue has a smaller page count and the page count is in multiples of four. This is because saddle-stitch binding involves printed sheets folded in half, nested together and secured with staples driven through the spine or thread-sewn from the outside. It’s also an efficient process that suits product catalogues that require a quicker turnaround time. Plus, it works extremely well if your product catalogue needs to be able to lay open completely flat.

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Alternatively, PUR perfect binding - which involves glueing the pages together to a wrap-around cover at the spine - is great for durability and giving your product catalogue a professional aesthetic. Perfect binding is cost-effective and allows your catalogue to be binded no matter the page count. The square spine is a presentable finishing touch, however it does mean that your catalogue won’t be able to lay flat. 

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In addition to thinking about the binding techniques that will best suit your product catalogue, considering the paper stock of your printed product is also important. We recommended using a heavier cover stock for the outside of your product catalogue - between 250 and 350 gsm - to provide durability and a professional feel. For the internal pages, the paper stock that will complement your specific product catalogue will depend on its content and how you want this printed parcel of marketing material to feel in your readers’ hands. A heavier internal paper stock is more suited to perfect binding thanks to how it creates a more substantial spine, whereas a lighter internal paper stock is better for saddle-stitch binding to prevent a bulky spine. It’s best to decide on the preferred binding of your product catalogue before you choose your paper stock.

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Whether you’re crafting a beautiful lookbook of luxurious clothes or detailing your products for potential stockists, designing and printing a product catalogue is vital to communicate your business and what it has to offer. It doesn’t have to be hard, either - chat to us at FolioFox and we can help you along the journey of creating the perfect product catalogue for your business. 

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To learn more about our product catalogue printing services and how modern digital printing technology can benefit your business, get in touch with our team today. We're here to help you navigate the evolving world of product catalogue production with confidence.

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