Order In The House

If your mailbox isn’t stuffed with catalogs this Holiday Season, your mailbox is the one floating around with the International Space Station. Those wiseacres, who predicted the demise of catalogs due to online sales, forgot the fact that you can’t make sales if you can’t reach your customers.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, catalog distribution has grown to over 20 billion pieces of mail, and I suspect that mailmen and chiropractors have a very symbiotic relationship during this season of peace, goodwill and bulk mail deliveries.

It is believed that Benjamin Franklin was the first cataloger in the United States. In l744, he produced the first catalog that sold scientific and academic books such as: Flying Kites in Lightening Storms—A New Way to Remove Fungus From Between Your Toes.

He also offered the guarantee, “Those persons who live remote, by sending their orders and money to B. Franklin may depend on the same justice as if present.” Of course, if the order was lost in the mail, he could always blame it on the pony.

In 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward of Chicago produced the first mail order catalog---a single 8x12 sheet of paper with a price list, pictures of merchandise and how to order it. He was able to lower prices by removing the middleman at the general store.

The first Sears Catalog was published in 1888. By 1895, it had grown to a 532- page book  “illustrating the largest variety of goods ever imagined,” and if you didn’t want any goods, you could always use the book to pump up your abs.

The Homestead Act of 1862, and America’s westward expansion, was followed by the development of the railroad. Also the postal system allowed a better postage rate of one-cent—as well as the advent of Rural Free Delivery in 1896. All this made the distribution of catalogs economical.

My daughter-in-law, Barbara looked at the pile of catalogs that had been stuffed in the mailbox and said, “Why would we want a catalog called, 'Dogs Are Us?' We have a cat!'"

Retailers hope that from the comfort of your own home, you will fall in love with catalogs that you didn’t even know existed, and you will become so enthralled with the merchandise that you will overlook the thousands of trees that died so you can order a dog costume---even if you don’t have a dog.

Esther Blumenfeld (Got to go. I need to order shoelaces that glow in the dark from Senior Living Essential.)