This is people-dependent. There are times, she says, when she can't help envying classmates in more traditional MBA jobs. They seem to be dealing with direct, intellectually challenging issues like supply replenishment or brand positioning. It seems cleaner, more straightforward. Ever since Wal-Mart showed how systems could yield a competitive advantage, retailers have been more willing to invest in operations efficiencies and the people who can generate them.
Few retailers are more adept at running numbers than catalogers.
Williams-Sonoma and its divisions, Pottery Barn, Chambers, Hold Everything, and Gardener's Eden, will send out 145 million catalogs in 62 separate mailings. With each mailing comes more data for the pool of 13 million customer records. Creativity is key, says Connolly, but information is power. It seems like a world ready for MBA skills. But each year only a handful of business school graduates head off to retailing.