The Mail Order Catalog

Brick and mortar stores used newspaper advertising to attract customers.  For the mail order business it was the catalog..  The catalog was the shop window, the store counter, the salesman..  There were mail order magazines and in the beginning days, Sears used these to reach the rural areas.  It became a war between the Mail Order Trust and the city merchant.  One magazine refused to allow Sears to advertise.  Cyrus Curtis, editor of Ladies Home Journal,  claimed that Sears' ads made extravagant claims (which they did) and were undignified.

Great mail order houses (like the Sears' on right) grew up on the strength of the catalogs, but part of the early problem was getting the catalog into the actual hands of the consumer. Sears planned to send them in batches of 24 to people to distribute.  For 30 days, the distributor recorded any purchases made from these 24 catalogs, then received premiums such as a bicycle, sewing machine, or stove, depending on the amount of sales from his 24 catalogs. 

Sears wrote most of the early catalog copy himself because he saw the whole basis of the business as getting the widest distribution  to the most customers.  To that end he wanted to be hands-on in that process.  Some years the catalog was offered free, some years it cost 5 cents (1893) and by 1901, it costs 50 cents, but the "best" customers always got their catalog free of charge as reward for their loyalty.

The first year's circulation (which is recorded) was 318,000 in 1897 and by 1904 it was over a million customers.  Two catalogs were mailed each year - spring and fall - so actual distribution was doubled those numbers.  By 1927, distribution was 75 million catalogs a year.

The catalog became bigger, more colorful and easier to read.  It went from 500 pages  in 1894 to needing an index in 1898.  Sears built his own printing plant to improve color printing and developed better paper that was lighter to mail and wouldn't smear.  The illustrations were still wordcut as late as 1905 - it was said that Sears alone kept the woodcut artists in business.

The mail order catalog pioneered illustration techniques.  Wards and Sears could not show the actual product so the illustration needed to be accurate and attractive.  These catalogs are credited with proving that 4 pages of color outsells 12 pages of black and white. 

The mail order catalog became the bible of farmer families - kept in the kitchen in easy reach and used in the one-room school houses to teach reading, spelling, math and even postal codes. Children added up prices, shipping costs and used the catalogs to learn about marketing.  The mail order catalog was an American icon that changed marketing in America - Amazon's great-grandfather!.

Next time - RFD
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On July 18, 1940 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is nominated for an unprecedented third term as President of the United States.  He would eventually be elected to serve four term in office - the only President to serve more than two terms.