Having said that, there are still some areas where the traditional model is used, such as book clubs and collector’s items, and the segment is still a $100+ billion market in the U.S. With the rise of the internet, however, a lot of businesses replaced the printed catalogue with an online hosted catalogue or a PDF version, to save on printing and mailing costs and some have moved the entire operation altogether to an online retail business. In the U.S., the first catalogue was the Blue Book by Tiffany, which came out in 1845.Ī lot of big name retailers, such as Sears, Bloomingdale’s, Next and JCPenny had their own mail-order operations, in addition to their brick & mortar operations. At that time, it was an innovative solution for a problem faced by many consumers. The model initially started in the 1800s to serve customers in rural areas, who didn’t have access to nearby stores that sell the type of merchandise they needed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |