Shoppers are putting down their phones, tablets and laptops, and now picking up something more old-school: the catalog.
They’re putting down their phones, tablets and laptops, and picking up that stalwart of the bygone, pre-Amazon era: the catalog.
Hamilton Davison, president of the American Catalog Mailers Association, cited research finding that millennials in particularly have an affinity for flipping pages — a preference he likened to the rediscovery of LPs and other so-called retro trends. The death of catalogs has been overstated, although they have evolved in the age of Amazon and fill a different kind of shopping niche, experts say. For its part, Amazon has brought the catalog experience full circle. It started mailing out a toy catalog beginning in 2018 — the year after Sears folded its Christmas Wish Book for the final time. Sears stopped publishing the annual icon after the 2011 edition.
Irene Bunnell, marketing manager at Uncommon Goods, a web- and catalog-based gift shop, said the company revamped the format of its usual holiday catalog this year to look more like a gift guide in a lifestyle magazine — a common trend among retailers publishing holiday catalogs. Photo-gift brand Shutterfly also gave its holiday catalog more of an “editorial” look and feel, and bumped up distribution by 6 percent over last year, according to a company spokesperson.
The size of catalogs gives them an edge over handheld screens, experts said. “The large visual profile of a catalog cover can invite people in… They mimic the retail shopping experience, or retail therapy, in your home at a time and place of your choosing,” Davison said. Perhaps surprisingly, Wong said some of the biggest proponents of paper are web- and social-based startups — an irony that is not lost on marketing pros.
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