In 1872, Aaron Montgomery, Ward of Chicago, produced the first mail-order catalogue for his Montgomery Ward mail order business, aimed at farmers in the Midwest who were suspicious of merchants.
By selling direct to the customer, Ward could avoid his goods having the retailer’s mark up applied, thereby reducing the cost to those customers.
The first catalogue was a single sheet of paper with a price list, just 8 by 12 inches, showing what was for sale and how to go about ordering it. Within 20 years, Ward’s original single-page list of products had grown into a 540-page illustrated book and he was by then, selling over 20,000 items. From 1921 to 1931 he even sold prefabricated kit houses by mail order. These were called ‘Wardway Homes’.
Others all over the world began to sell via mail order too. The T Eaton Co. Limited of Toronto, produced its first 34-page catalogue in 1884. By 1920 it had mail-order warehouses in Winnipeg, Toronto and Moncton. It opened its first catalogue office in Oakville in 1916 and others followed. Richard Warren Sears published the first Sears catalogue in 1888. It captured the catalogue industry in the USA and became a byword for catalogue shopping.
In the UK, Sir John Moores set up his ‘Littlewoods Mail Order Store’. The first catalogue was published in May 1932 with 168 pages and the motto: “We hoist our Flag in the Port of Supply and right away we sail to the Ports of Demand – the Homes of The People”. Moores learned from the examples of his American contemporaries (Montgomery Ward, Sears and Roebuck) and by 1936 the Littlewoods catalogue annual turnover had reached £4 million.
Today, despite the cost and criticism of printed catalogues, the many top retailers worldwide, including Ikea, Macy’s, Williams Sonoma, continue to produce themed, specialty and promotional catalogues, and most importantly, consumers demand them and stack them proudly on their coffee tables.
Contribution to Retail History
The development of mail-order shopping by the likes of Sears democratized retail, opening up the availability of consumer goods to huge swathes of the population worldwide. Today, catalogues can be seen as the precursor to e-commerce, as the principles of internet shopping follow similar lines.