As media become more fragmented seemingly with every new technological breakthrough, today’s multi-channel marketers often find themselves struggling to make the platforms work in unison. And though many fail, a growing number of brands are indeed figuring out how to successfully integrate their communications outlets — and the payoff has been sweet.

Clothing manufacturer Fair Indigo is among those that have tasted the success of a winning multi-channel effort — and now executives are craving more.

Not very long ago, the company, which specializes in clothing made in non-sweatshop factories, kicked off a multi-channel balancing act with staggering scope. Fair Indigo launched a Wisconsin retail store, a robust Web site and a catalog — all at the same time.

Rob Behnke, the co-founder and president of the company, says one of the big reasons for the simultaneous launches is that he and the other founders figured that starting the channels together would make it easier to integrate them. Given that each had experience in different marketing channels — “We have all done one or many channels,” Behnke explains — they believed they could get each one up and running without harming the others or giving one more importance than the others.

“What we learned in looking back is that, when you launch one channel and then another, you’re working with the infrastructure that was built for the first channel,” Behnke notes. “The new channels often take a back seat. What ends up happening is the store experience becomes an afterthought experience. We could easily see ourselves falling into that trap, and we wanted to create the best experience in each channel from the start.”

Meanwhile, they integrated the platforms by utilizing the same order-entry system for catalogs and the retail store as for the Web site. In doing so, Behnke and his partners have ensured that customer information is stored centrally irrespective of the channel that gleaned it. (The company also offers a call center where customers can make additional purchases; however, this wasn’t started at the same time as the store, site and catalog.)

The order-entry system also lets Fair Indigo salespeople bring up a customer’s purchase history across the three platforms. This allows the company to better tailor future offers to that customer.

So far, the system has served the clothing maker admirably. For example, the catalog has consistently posted strong response rates and, from 2007 to 2008, Behnke and his partners grew it by 74 percent. Further, Behnke estimates that about 8 percent of shoppers who visit the retail store are drawn by items in the catalog. And once in the store, Behnke points out, shoppers are also more likely to add on to their catalog order with “impulse” buys of chocolates, coffee, jewelry or other small items.

But Behnke warns other marketers, even those who have proven equally adept at multi-channel balancing acts, that cultivating customers via each channel and remembering to value each channel equally remains a challenge.

“It’s a natural tendency to say, ‘These customers are [more profitable] than these customers because we make more money from them,’” Behnke says. “At the end of day, we really have to make sure we treat every customer and every channel equally.”

INFORMATION BOX

Fair Indigo at a Glance

* Mails its catalog to 3 million households annually.

* Estimates that 5 percent of in-store shoppers bring a catalog in with them, and that another 3 percent who come in without the catalog have still been driven by it to the store.

* Grew its catalog circulation by 74 percent from 2007 to 2008.