Gardeners have relied on the mail for centuries. Long before mail-order nurseries first sent their catalogs to customers, gardeners wrote to friends asking for a piece of a peony root, a tulip bulb or ...

The Figi's mail order catalog, known for its offerings like holiday gifts and gourmet food, recently shut down its catalog division. The state of Wisconsin is famous for a number of things — beer, ...

In one TV commercial from this year’s Toys R Us holiday campaign, a mom sweats through her cycling workout while her suspiciously helpful daughter tries to stir up a breeze. “I’m just gonna leave this ...

While mail-order companies may seem like a relic of the past, they served an important role in retail history and continue to operate to this day. Mail-order catalogs are physical books or booklets ...

Sears' mail-order catalogs from the 1950s and 1960s offered dogs, ponies, monkeys, and other animals for purchase. Sears offered live animals through its mail-order catalogs from 1956 to 1964. However ...

The internet hasn’t killed off the mail-order catalog. Discover a list of popular mail order catalogs from direct-to-consumer clothing and home brands who are banking on physical snail-mail pieces as ...

If you're clicking through the internet today hoping to do a little shopping, you likely have Aaron Montgomery Ward to thank. Ward's catalog was a single sheet offering 163 items. By 1884, the catalog ...

“Sports suits” and “suspender skirts” might not be the focus of New York Fashion Week but we’re enjoying the vintage charm found in a Smithsonian Trade Literature Collection from the early 20th ...

A mail-order business is one that receives and fulfills orders for merchandise through the mail. The terms “mail-order,” “direct mail,” and “direct marketing” are sometimes used interchangeably; in ...

Monday’s announcement that Sears would file for bankruptcy and close 142 stores came as little surprise to anyone who has followed the retail giant’s collapse in recent years. Still, the news inspired ...

Lillian Vernon, whose kitchen-table notion to sell monogrammed handbags and belts spawned one of America’s best-known mail-order catalog businesses, has died. She was 88. She died Monday in New York ...