Mail order - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer. The products are typically delivered directly to an address supplied by the customer, such as a home address, but occasionally the orders are delivered to a nearby retail

Retail

Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

location for the customer to pick up. Some merchants also allow the goods to be shipped directly to a third party consumer, which is an effective way to send a gift to an out-of-town recipient.

A mail order catalogue is a publication containing a list of general merchandise from a company. Companies who publish and operate mail order catalogues are referred to as cataloguers within the industry. Cataloguers buy or manufacture goods then market those goods to prospects (prospective customers). Many cataloguers, just as with most retailers, are increasingly buying goods from China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. Cataloguers "rent" names from list brokers or cooperative database

Cooperative database

A cooperative database is a type of database that holds information on customers and their transactions. Many companies will contribute information to a database in return for aggregate information on the customers other companies have provided. Such databases are used for promotional mailings,...

s. The catalogue itself is published in a similar fashion as any magazine publication and distributed through a variety of means, usually via a postal service

Mail

Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...

and the internet.

Sometimes supermarket products do mail order promotions, whereby people can send in the UPC

Universal Product Code

The Universal Product Code is a barcode symbology , that is widely used in North America, and in countries including the UK, Australia, and New Zealand for tracking trade items in stores. Its most common form, the UPC-A, consists of 12 numerical digits, which are uniquely assigned to each trade item...

plus shipping and handling to get a product made especially for the company.

Few things are not available through mail order.

History

Creation of an industry

By creating a direct marketing industry through his mail order catalogue, Aaron Montgomery Ward would unknowingly enable the creation of a powerful global network that would include everything from mailing, to mail order, to telemarketing and lastly to social medias. Together Ward and his long time competitor Sears changed the direction of the worldwide marketplace by introducing the concept of individuality with the term consumption, allowing therefore the generations of today to take full control of their consumption behaviours and all of this in complete privacy. Today, the mail order catalogue industry Montgomery funded is worth approximately 100 billions of dollars, and generates over 2 trillion only in incremental sales and supports till this day an estimated 10.9 million jobs either directly related to marketing industry or dependent upon it.

Early catalogues

According to The National Mail Order Association, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

is believed to have been the first cataloguer in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. In 1744, he formulated the basic mail order concept when he produced the first catalogue, which sold scientific and academic books. He is also credited with 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".

The earliest surviving mail-order business, now known as Hammacher Schlemmer, was established by Alfred Hammacher in New York City in 1848. Offering mechanic's tools and builder's hardware, its first catalogue was published in 1881. Now known for offering an eclectic assortment of items, it is America's longest running mail-order business.

CENCO dominated the field of selling science education equipment through their mail order catalogue.

Ward: mail order pioneer

In 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward

Aaron Montgomery Ward

Aaron Montgomery Ward was an American businessman notable for the invention of mail order.The mail-order industry was started by Aaron Montgomery Ward in 1872 in Chicago...

produced the first mail-order catalogue for his Montgomery Ward

Montgomery Ward

Montgomery Ward is an online retailer that carries the same name as the former American department store chain, founded as the world's #1 mail order business in 1872 by Aaron Montgomery Ward, and which went out of business in 2001...

mail order business. By buying goods and then reselling them directly to customers, Aaron Montgomery Ward was consequently removing the middlemen at the general store and to the benefit of the customer, lowering drastically the prices.

This first catalogue was a single sheet of paper with a price list, 8 by 12 inches, showing the merchandise for sale and ordering instructions. Montgomery Ward identified a market of merchant-wary farmers in the Midwest. Within two decades, his single-page list of products grew into a 540-page illustrated book selling over 20,000 items.

From about 1921 to 1931, Wards sold prefabricated kit house

Kit house

Kit houses, also known as pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses, mail order homes, or catalog homes, were a type of prefabricated housing that was popular in the United States in the first half of the 20th century...

s, called Wardway Homes, by mail order.

Eaton: Canadian icon

The T. Eaton Co. Limited was once Canada's largest department store retailer. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying offices across the globe, and a catalogue that was found in the homes of most Canadians. The first Eaton's catalogue was a 34-page booklet issued in 1884. As Eaton’s grew, so did the catalogue. By 1920, Eaton's operated mail order warehouses in Winnipeg, Toronto and Moncton to serve its catalogue customers. Catalogue order offices were also established throughout the country, with the first opening in Oakville in 1916.

Over time, the catalogue became a less profitable operation, and by the 1970s, it was a money-losing proposition. As Canada's population became more urban over the course of the 20th century, Canadians had access to a greater number of local stores, and were less reliant on catalogue purchases. By the mid-1970s, it was estimated that 60 percent of the suburban customers throughout Canada lived within a thirty-minute drive of an Eaton’s store. Others blamed Eaton’s management for the catalogue’s failures, pointing to the similar Simpsons-Sears catalogue (now the Sears Canada catalogue), which continues to this day even though it has never enjoyed the iconic status or popularity of the Eaton's catalogue. At a news conference on January 14, 1976, Eaton's announced—to the shock of many Canadians—that the 1976 spring-summer catalogue would be their last and 9,000 mail-order employees were out of work.

Sears: 20th century mail order giant

Richard Warren Sears was a railroad station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota when he started a business selling watches through mail order catalogs. Sears moved to Chicago, Illinois where he met Alvah C. Roebuck, who joined him in the business. In 1893, the corporate business name became Sears, Roebuck and Co.

The first Sears catalog was published in 1888. By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, featuring sewing machine

Sewing machine

A sewing machine is a textile machine used to stitch fabric, cards and other material together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies...

s, bicycle

Bicycle

A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....

s, sporting goods

Sports equipment

Sports equipment is a general term for any object used for sport or exercise. Examples of sports equipment include:-Exercise equipment:Examples for exercise include swiss balls, weights, equipment for the gym...

, automobile

Automobile

An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...

s (produced from 1905–1915 by Lincoln Motor Car Works

Lincoln Motor Car Works

Lincoln Motor Car Works was an automobile company in Chicago, Illinois. It produced cars for Sears Roebuck from 1908 until 1912. Nine models were offered, priced between US$325 and $475, with the Model L advertised at $495 complete. They were sold by mail, out of the Sears catalog...

of Chicago, not related to the current Ford Motor Company brand of the same name

Lincoln (automobile)

Lincoln is an American luxury vehicle brand of the Ford Motor Company. Lincoln vehicles are sold mostly in North America.-History:The company was founded in August 1915 by Henry M. Leland, one of the founders of Cadillac . During World War I, he left Cadillac which was sold to General Motors...

) and a host of other new items.

Organizing the company so it could handle orders on an economical and efficient basis, Chicago clothing manufacturer Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...

became a part-owner in 1895. Alvah Roebuck had to resign soon after due to ill health, but the company still retained his name. By the following year, doll

Doll

A doll is a model of a human being, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have traditionally been used in magic and religious rituals throughout the world, and traditional dolls made of materials like clay and wood are found in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. The earliest documented dolls...

s, refrigerator

Refrigerator

A refrigerator is a common household appliance that consists of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump that transfers heat from the inside of the fridge to its external environment so that the inside of the fridge is cooled to a temperature below the ambient temperature of the room...

s, stove

Stove

A stove is an enclosed heated space. The term is commonly taken to mean an enclosed space in which fuel is burned to provide heating, either to heat the space in which the stove is situated or to heat the stove itself, and items placed on it...

s and groceries

Grocery store

A grocery store is a store that retails food. A grocer, the owner of a grocery store, stocks different kinds of foods from assorted places and cultures, and sells these "groceries" to customers. Large grocery stores that stock products other than food, such as clothing or household items, are...

had been added to the catalog.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. soon developed a reputation for both quality products and customer satisfaction. By 1895, the company was producing a 532-page catalog with the largest variety of items that anybody at the time could have thought of. “In 1893, the sales topped 400,000 dollars. Two years later they exceeded 750,000 dollars."

In 1906 Sears opened its catalog plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower. And by that time, the Sears catalog had become known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". In 1933, Sears, Roebuck and Co. produced the first of its famous Christmas catalogs known as the "Sears Wishbook

Sears Wishbook

The Sears Wish Book is a popular Christmas-gift catalog released by Sears Holdings Corporation, annually in September. The catalog contains toys and other holiday-related merchandise...

", a catalog featuring toys and gifts and separate from the annual Christmas Catalog.

From 1908 to 1940, Sears also sold kit house

Kit house

s by mail order, selling 70,000 to 75,000 such homes, many of which are still lived in today.

Moore: merchant gambler of Great Britain

Sir John Moores

John Moores (merchant)

Sir John Moores CBE was a British businessman and philanthropist most famous for the founding of the now defunct Littlewoods retail company that was located in Liverpool, England.-Early years:...

was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

businessman and philanthropist most famous for the founding of the Littlewoods

Littlewoods

Littlewoods is the name of a former retail and gambling company founded in Liverpool, Merseyside, England by John Moores in 1923.It started as a shopping catalogue company, processing orders by post in the early 1970s. In 1981, it expanded to a call centre, processing orders via telephone. At its...

retail company that was located in Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Moores became a millionaire through the creation of the Littlewood Pool, one of the best-known names in sports gambling in England.

In January 1932, Moores was able to disengage himself sufficiently from the pools to start up Littlewoods Mail Order Store. This was followed on July 6, 1937 by the opening of the first Littlewoods department store in Blackpool

Blackpool

Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...

. By the time World War II started there were 25 Littlewoods stores across the UK and over 50 by 1952.

The first Littlewoods catalogue was published in May 1932 with 168 pages. The motto of the catalogue was: "We hoist our Flag in the Port of Supply, and right away we sail to the Ports of Demand—the Homes of the People. We intend to help the homely folk of this country help them to obtain some of the profits made by manufacturing and trading... to save money on things they must have. This Catalogue is our Ship... staffed by an All-British crew... You won't find sleepy, old-fashioned goods carried in the LITTLEWOODS ship. Only the newest of the new goods—honest, British-made merchandise."

With the success of the catalogue business, Moores moved his business four times to larger buildings in 1932. Moores sailed to America to look at the operations of Montgomery Ward and Sears and Roebuck. By 1936, the business had hit the 4 million pound mark, making Moores a millionaire a second time over, by mail order.

Penney: middle name Cash

James Cash Penney started his first retail store in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming. By 1925, J.C. Penney

J.C. Penney

J. C. Penney Company, Inc. is a chain of American mid-range department stores based in Plano, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas. The company operates 1,107 department stores in all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. JCPenney also operates catalog sales merchant offices nationwide in many...

had 674 stores generating sales of $91 million. In 1962 J.C. Penney bought Wisconsin based General Merchandise Company with discount stores and a mail-order operation. Thus J.C. Penney entered the mail order catalogue business. J.C. Penney, a latecomer in catalogue operations, was different from many of its competitors because it had a large retail store base before launching into the mail-order business. The first JCPenney catalog was mailed the next year in 1963. Customers could order from the catalog inside J.C. Penney stores in eight states. The J.C. Penney Catalog Distribution Center was located in Milwaukee.

Wunderman: direct marketing genius

Mail order pioneer Aaron Montgomery Ward knew that by using the technique of selling product directly to the consumer at appealing prices could, if executed effectively and efficiently, revolutionize the market industry and therefore be used as an innovative model for marketing products. The term "direct marketing

Direct marketing

Direct marketing is a channel-agnostic form of advertising that allows businesses and nonprofits to communicate straight to the customer, with advertising techniques such as mobile messaging, email, interactive consumer websites, online display ads, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional...

" was coined long after Montgomery Ward`s time. In 1967 Lester Wunderman

Lester Wunderman

Lester Wunderman is an advertising executive widely considered the creator of modern-day direct marketing. His innovations include the magazine subscription card, the toll-free 1-800 number, loyalty rewards programs, and many more...

identified, named, and defined "direct marketing". Wunderman — considered to be the father of contemporary direct marketing — is behind the creation of the toll-free 1-800 number and numerous mail order based loyalty marketing programs including the Columbia Record Club, the magazine subscription card, and the American Express Customer Rewards program.

The information age

With the invention of the Internet, a company's website became the more usual way to order merchandise for delivery by mail, although the term "mail order" is not always used to describe the ordering of goods over the Internet. It is more usual to refer to this as e-commerce or online shopping. Most traditional mail order companies now also sell over the Internet.

However, rising paper, printing, and postage costs have caused some traditional catalogue merchants, such as Bloomingdale's

Bloomingdale's

Bloomingdale's is an American department store owned by Macy's, Inc. .Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman G. Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan's Lower East Side...

, to suspend their printed catalogues and sell only through websites. Also, while some Internet merchants are or were also catalogue merchants, many have never had a printed catalogue.

Catalogue publishing

Year Mail Order Catalogues were founded

Hammacher Schlemmer: 1848 (US)
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward is an online retailer that carries the same name as the former American department store chain, founded as the world's #1 mail order business in 1872 by Aaron Montgomery Ward, and which went out of business in 2001...

: 1872 (US)
Eaton's
Eaton's
The T. Eaton Co. Limited was once Canada's largest department store retailer. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying offices across the globe, and a catalogue...

: 1884 (Canada)
Sears: 1893 (US)
Universal Stores: 1900 (UK)
Freemans
Freemans
Freemans is a British catalogue clothing retailer.Freemans was founded in 1904 with four staff, and acquired by Otto GmbH in 1999. In 2000 its administrative department was merged with Grattan plc, under the banner of Otto UK....

: 1905 (UK)
Empire: 1907 (UK)
Grattan
Grattan plc
Grattan is a British catalogue clothing retailer based in Bradford, UK with 18 stores and 2 main catalogues and a number of specialty catalogues. Grattan has approximately 2,600 employees....

: 1912 (UK)
L.L.Bean: 1912 (US)
Eddie Bauer
Eddie Bauer
Eddie Bauer Holdings Inc. is a holding company that operates the Eddie Bauer clothing store chain, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, United States. EBH was formed after Eddie Bauer's former parent company, Spiegel, Inc., went bankrupt in 2003...

: 1920 (US)
La Redoute
La Redoute
La Redoute is the largest mail order company in France.The company is based in Roubaix. It was founded in 1875. It is owned by the PPR holding company. PPR was named "Pinault-Printemps-Redoute" until 2005. Thus the "R" in the acronym refers to La Redoute....

: 1922 (France)
Littlewoods
Littlewoods
Littlewoods is the name of a former retail and gambling company founded in Liverpool, Merseyside, England by John Moores in 1923.It started as a shopping catalogue company, processing orders by post in the early 1970s. In 1981, it expanded to a call centre, processing orders via telephone. At its...

: 1932 (UK)
Miles Kimball: 1935 (US)
Vermont Country Store
Vermont Country Store
The Vermont Country Store, Inc. is an American catalogue, retail, and e-commerce business based in Vermont, with stores in Weston and Rockingham, company headquarters in Manchester, and a distribution facility and customer service center in North Clarendon, near Rutland...

: 1945 (US)
Walter Drake: 1947 (US)
Cohasset Colonials: 1949 (US)
Lillian Vernon
Lillian Vernon
Lillian Vernon Corporation is an American catalog merchant and online retailer that sells household, children's and fashion accessory products. In business since 1951 Lillian Vernon Corporation is an American catalog merchant and online retailer that sells household, children's and fashion...

: 1951 (US)
Taylor Gifts: 1952 (US)
Harriet Carter
Harriet Carter
Harriet Carter Gifts Inc, founded by Harriet Carter, is an American retailer that specializes in unique gifts and household products. Harriet Carter has been in business since 1958. It continues to maintain its headquarters in North Wales, PA near Plymouth Meeting, PA where it was founded...

: 1958 (US)
Otto
Otto GmbH
The Otto group, or Otto , is the world's largest mail order company, operating in more than 20 countries. The family of executive board chairman Michael Otto owns the majority of the company. The company is based in Hamburg, Germany...

: 1959 (Germany)
Lands' End
Lands' End
Lands' End is a clothing retailer based in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, that specializes in casual clothing, luggage, and home furnishings. The majority of Lands' End's business is conducted through mail order and Internet sales, but the company also runs more than a dozen retail operations, primarily in...

: 1963 (US)
JC Penney: 1963 (US)
Next: 1988 (UK)
E.J. Basnett Hardware Company: 2010 (US)

Taxes

The objective of the direct marketing industry is to alter the sales distribution chain, in other words [bypass] the wholesaler and the retailer and go directly to the customer, reducing therefore tariffs and taxes.

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, an advantage of this type of shopping is that the merchant is typically not required by law to add sales tax

Sales tax

A sales tax is a tax, usually paid by the consumer at the point of purchase, itemized separately from the base price, for certain goods and services. The tax amount is usually calculated by applying a percentage rate to the taxable price of a sale....

to the price of the goods, unless they have a physical presence in the customer's state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

. Instead, most states require the resident purchaser to pay applicable taxes. There has been periodic discussion about amending the law to make these sales taxable.

In the European Union, a "VAT union" is in force: the merchant selling to a buyer in a different EU member country adds the VAT of his own country to the price, and the buyer pays no additional tax. A buyer for resale may deduct that VAT, just as with purchases made within his own country. This makes the EU look more like one country than the U.S. in this respect.

External links

Nystrom, Paul Henry. Chapter XIV, "The Mail Order House," The Economics of Retailing. New York: Ronald Press, 1915. Discusses the operations and business practices of U.S. mail-order firms from the 1870s to 1915.
History of Mail Order Catalogue Shopping in the UK
History of Canadian Mail-order Catalogues - The Canadian Museum of Civilization

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.