Mothercare’s performance for its second quarter (to October 13th) saw its “Direct in Home” operation achieve a 102 per cent increase in sales over the same quarter last year. The results include those for Early Learning Centre which Mothercare acquired in June.

New senior appointments at Figleaves have been made as the business forges ahead with expansion plans for UK and US markets. Julia Hall joins as chief executive from Tesco where she was most recently buying and merchandising director for its Central European clothing business. Julia is joined by former Waterstone’s interim finance director Debra Wood who has been named chief financial officer. Louise English joined last month from Sainsburys to take up the role of marketing director.

The ten year veteran buying, and latterly, merchandising director for Scotts of Stow, Caroline Newby, is to step down from her role next month. Caroline leaves to spend time travelling with her husband but has not completely ruled out returning to the business in the future.

On the first full open day of the ECMOD conference & exhibition there were all kinds of fabulous prizes up for grabs. It is oysters in Whitstable and a night in a seafront hotel for one show visitor following a show round the recycling facility at M Real’s paper mill in Sittingbourne….. a crowd gathered when Royal Mail’s camera crew dropped in on the morning of the 24th to interview key catalogue mailers about their opinions of Royal Mail in the wake of the recent strike action. Over at the ECMOD HQ hotel, the Copthorne Tara, the Catalogue Exchange had a record turnout for its annual member dinner on 23rd October meanwhile, the Speakeasy party night on the 24th was a complete sell out. We’d love to have been able to say yes to all the people who wanted tickets but there wasn’t an inch of space left ….. And the Supplier of the Year Awards saw seven trophies presented by Catalogue e-Business editorial director Sherry Chiger and sales manager Mary Adams. The winners were Mohn media, CHS Creative, Go Direct Marketing, Citipost, Prolog, Exact Abacus, and 192.com

Shop.com’s Jason Smith and Pindar’s Roger Willcocks stepped into to join Lysander Meath-Baker in a conference session called Web 2.0: Driving MultiChannel Integration/Long Tail & more after Adobe’s Doug Mack pulled out at short notice.

The Catalogue Exchange was the hottest topic of conversation at ECMOD along with the imminent ECMOD Awards. The Awards evening on 5th March at the Natural History Museum is already half full and a number of new sponsors are in the process of signing up.