Catalog merchant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catalog merchant is a term for a form of retailing. The typical merchant sold a wide variety of household and personal products, with many emphasizing jewellery. Unlike a self-serve retail store, most of the items are not displayed; customers selected the products from printed catalogs in the store and filled out an order blank. The order was brought to the sales counter, where a clerk would retrieve the items from the warehouse area to a payment and checkout station. By operating as an in-store catalog sales center, it could be exempt from the "Resale price maintenance" policy of the manufacturers, which can force conventional retailers a minimum sales price to prevent price-cutting competition. The catalog merchant has generally lower prices then other retailers; and lower overhead expenses due to the smaller size of store and lack of large showroom space.
The repeal of the "resale price maintenace" sanctioning law in 1980 meant that the chain discounters of Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc. could now set and change prices at will, in a more consumer friendly environment where the customer can examine the goods and confirm availability before approaching sales staff. As a result, this retail sector had gone into decline in the 1980s. As big box stores and internet shopping became very popular in the 1990s, the slide had become severe.
Many companies in recent years have moved away from relying solely on catalog sales, augmenting them with online, and sometimes also direct retail sales. The move toward online sales includes such long-established department store chains as Sears and JCPenney that relied heavily on catalog sales. However, many long-established catalog merchants have gone out of business in recent years including BestProducts, Brendle's, Ellman's, Rink's, Service Merchandise, and Consumers Distributing.
[edit] Trivia
In its August 2006 issue, Multichannel Merchant Magazine (Formerly Catalog Age) criticized an edit of this Wikipedia entry which stated "Catalog merchants were a traditional form of retailing that is now mostly defunct in the United States" (emphases added) (pg. 64) as inaccurate. However the magazine's name change from Catalog Age to Multichannel Merchant is an indicator of the trend away from companies relying solely on catalog advertising.
[edit] Resources
- Multichannel Merchant Magazine (Formerly Catalog Age)
- Mail Order Blog Offering Information On Various Mail Order Merchants)
