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 ...

“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 ...

The internet hasn’t killed off the mail-order catalog. Discover a list of popular mail order catalogs from direct-to-consumer ...

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 ...

I hate to be the one to give you bad news, but some seed companies are already running out of seeds. Don’t panic: there are, in fact, plenty of seeds out there. And if one company doesn’t have your ...

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, ...

With Black Friday over, the holidays have officially arrived. Have you got your Christmas shopping done yet? This week’s Historical Treasure is an example of how many people used to do a lot of their ...

Fifty years ago this month, a 29-year-old former army paratrooper flew back to his home in California from his father’s funeral in Illinois. As the nation’s heartland scrolled beneath his plane’s ...

Mail-order catalogs have been mostly dead for a while, but now Amazon is putting a new twist on the idea for the digital shopping age. But to the retailer, that’s the entire point. Just stop saying ...

Last week, I featured a gallery of photos of Alabama kit homes bought from Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogs. While some readers were surprised to learn Sears sold kits for everything from outhouses to ...