National Day 8/18

[Tracy F]

NATIONAL MAIL ORDER CATALOG DAY
What was once one of the most popular ways of shopping is remembered each year on August 18 as it is National Mail Order Catalog Day.

This day marks the anniversary of the first Montgomery Wards mail order catalog. On this day in 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward of Chicago produced a catalog designed for direct order via mail. He aimed to remove the middleman from the business of buying and selling. As a result, he also drastically lowered prices.

The very first catalog consisted of an 8 by 12-inch single sheet of paper. On it, Ward included the merchandise for sale, price list, and ordering instructions. Before long, the Montgomery Wards single-page list of products grew into a 540 page illustrated book selling over 20,000 items.

It didn't take long for enterprising merchants to copy Montgomery Wards' idea. One notable merchant, Richard Warren Sears, mailed his catalog in 1896. As others entered the field, catalog sales grew. By 1971, catalog sales of major United States firms exceeded more than $250 million in postal revenue.

It's interesting to note, according to the National Mail Order Association, Aaron Montgomery Ward wasn't the first to conceive of the mail order catalog. In the United States. Benjamin Franklin may have formulated the first basic mail order concept. He produced a catalog to sell scientific and academic books. Franklin also receives credit for offering the first mail-order guarantee: “Those persons who live remote, by sending their orders and money to B. Franklin may depend on the same justice as if present.”

[Tracy F]

I used to love getting catalogs in the mail and bought many things through them. I still look through the one catalog we get every few months from a furniture store.

[Lolis]

I love looking at catalogs! I remember my sister and I waiting for the catalogs, especially the Christmas one. We also loved the Sears catalog. We used to cut out furniture and all sorts of things to build houses and rooms by pasting the pictures in our drawing notebooks.

[Jan Mosier]

I miss the days of looking through catalogs and making my Christmas list.

[Tamara]

We still get a couple of catalogs but I just flip through them real fast and discard them. So much is done online now and honestly I like the catalogs better. I hate the wait time on the computer just to see one item.