You Are Never Finished Improving
There should never be a moment when you sit down and say, "There, that is it, my catalog is as good as it will ever be". My answer to this is, "No, it is not, and the second you start to think that is the second your catalog begins to slip and start to decline instead".
What exactly is the definition of the perfect catalog? How does one define the perfect anything? The problem is that such a term is subjective. Everyone is going to have their own opinion on what makes something perfect, and no matter how perfect you might think something is, your customers might say something else.
Really you need to look to your customers for this, but once again, are they really going to be able to say what makes a catalog perfect? If you have one thousand people on your mailing list receiving your catalogs I am guessing you are going to have one thousand different definitions on what makes for a perfect catalog?
How is one who likes to print catalogs supposed to deal with this then? Everyone wants to be constantly improving what they are doing, but is it not nice to have some kind of goal to reach, that perfect catalog you can quest for?
Goals are the driving force of most companies, and this should be no different for your catalog, but do not set a goal like making the perfect one, because you will never be able to achieve it.
The issue here is that the best catalogs are going to have an expanding base of customers. You want to constantly be reaching out to new people and make your mailing list that much longer each day. But if you are doing this than you are drawing in people who are going to want something slightly different from the catalog. The more of these people you get the more changes you will have to make to your catalog before one could consider it perfect.
So this also means that your catalog is never really going to be perfect because if your mailing list is growing, so too must you change things a little bit each time you print catalogs again. Be constantly on the look out for new ways you can make things better. Look at other catalogs companies are making and see what you like and what you could use for your own catalogs.
This is as close as you will ever get to the perfect catalog. I would say if you did want to define it the perfect catalog is one that is always evolving into something better to suit its customers, and each catalog is just a little better than the one before it. I can say for certain that as soon as you decide you are finished and your catalog is a good as it can get is the moment you fall away from any hope of true perfection.
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