“Black Friday” is a fairly recent marketing innovation designed to help businesses to get their profit and loss sheets “in the black” through promoting sales for Christmas. However, in the 1800s, when many people still lived in rural areas, the situation was much different than from today. Most of what people acquired they either made themselves, or they bought from a local dry goods store or mercantile—or specialty shops. However, what about those items that were either not available from local shops, or which, by the time the local retailer added his profit margin, were too expensive for the average person to purchase?
Toward the end of the century, another means of purchasing wanted goods at a reasonable price became available—mail order catalogs.Unlike today, those shopping by catalog dared not wait until the Friday after Thanksgiving (especially in the years Thanksgiving fell on the fifth Thursday until the Forth Thursday was established).
Between the mid-to-late 1800s and the mid-1930s, Chicago was one of the most important industrial centers in the country. It was from Chicago folks all over North America could order goods from a catalog.
MONTGOMERY WARD
The first of what became the two biggest general appeal mail order catalogs was the Montgomery Ward catalog founded by Aaron Mongomery Ward.
While working as a traveling salesman for various dry-goods retailers, Aaron Montgomery Ward came in contact with members of rural American communities, who desired strongly the comforts of city life. Unfortunately many in rural areas were subject to inflated costs passed on by intermediaries. Also, the levels of product quality were often at question. Ward’s goal was to eliminate the intermediaries, and, thereby, provide goods for rural community members at a lower cost. Using his catalog, customers would purchase goods by mail and have them delivered to their nearest train station.
Ward experienced a challenging beginning to his business, including having his inventory destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He did manage to establish his business at his offices on the corner of North Clark and Kinzie streets with two partners and $1,600 in start-up capital.
Early Mongomery Ward catalogs
On August 18, 1872, the first Montgomery Ward catalog—designed by Mr. Ward himself—was released. There were other businesses that published mail order catalogs, but Aaron Montgomery Ward is credited with coining the term “general public mail order catalog.” The catalog was first distributed as a single sheet of paper that sold 163 items and included instructions on how to order.
The following year, Ward was abandoned by his two partners. He continued his business with the help of his future brother-in-law, Richard Thorne.
Throughout the next several decades, Ward experienced rapid growth. Most rural customers were attracted to the wide range of items they otherwise could not purchase locally. Starting in 1875, Ward began his policy of satisfaction guaranteed or your money back, which prompted customers to place a great deal of trust in his catalog products. Ward’s catalog would quickly prove to be a success, with the catalog growing to 32 pages by 1874 and to 152, with 3,000 items, in 1876.
By 1883, a single page had turned into 200 pages, with over 10,000 items. The catalog, which became popularly known as the "Wish Book", later grew to 240 pages and 10,000 items with over three million subscribers.
In 1896, Wards encountered its first serious competition in the mail order business, when Richard Warren Sears introduced his first general catalog. In 1900, Wards had total sales of $8.7 million, compared to $10 million for Sears. Both companies struggled for dominance during much of the 20th century.
SEARS (SEARS & ROEBUCK)
After his family lost their fortune, Richard Warren Sears went to work for the railroad. In 1886, when he was twenty-three, his station received a shipment of gold watches from a Chicago manufacturer.
A common scam existing at the time involved wholesalers who would ship their products to retailers who had not ordered them. Upon refusal, the wholesaler would offer the already price-hiked items to the retailer at a lower consignment cost in the guise of alleviating the cost to ship the items back. The unsuspecting retailer would then agree to take this new-found bargain off the wholesaler's hands, mark up the items and sell them to the public, making a small profit in the transaction.
Knowing about the scam, the local consignee, jeweler Edward Stegerson, refused the unsolicited shipment.
Sears jumped at the opportunity, and made an agreement with the wholesaler to keep any profit he reaped above $12, and then he set about offering his wares to other station agents along the railroad line for $14. The watches were considered an item of urban sophistication. Also because of the growth of railways, and the recent application of time zones, farmers and railroads alike now needed to keep time accurately. For those two reasons the station agents had no trouble selling the watches to passers-by.
Within six months, Sears had netted $5,000. He felt so confident in this venture that he moved to Minneapolis and founded the R. W. Sears Watch Company. Possessing a talent for writing promotional copy, he placed advertisements in farm publications and mailed flyers to potential clients. He used the personal approach, speaking directly to rural and small-town communities, using his ads to persuade them to purchase by mail-order.
In 1887, Sears moved his company to Chicago. The same year, he also hired watch repairman, Alvah Curtis Roebuck to repair any watches being returned. Roebuck was Sears's first employee, and, in 1891, he became co-founder of Sears, Roebuck & Company.
In 1895 the company was short of cash. Roebuck left the business. Sears sold one half of the company for $75,000.00 to Aaron Nusbaum and his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenwald. The company was incorporated in Illinois as Sear Roebuck & Co. of Illinois on September 7, 1895.
The first Sears catalog was published in 1893 and offered only watches.
By 1897, items such as men's and ladies clothing,
Children’s clothing,
Footwear,
Sewing machines, sofas, chairs, and baby buggies
Stoves, silverware,
Bicycles, and athletic equipment were offered.
The 500-page catalog was sent to some 300,000 homes.
Like Ward, Sears catered to the rural customer. He knew what the rural customer needed. He also had experience working with the railroad and he knew how to ship merchandise to remote areas.
I have a reproduction copy of the 1897 Sears Roebuck & Co. catalog. What fun it is to scan through it and see the “hot” items of that era. Oh, if prices today were only the same.
To find the book description and link for Marigold, please CLICK HERE.
Sources:
http://websites.umich.edu/~eng217/student_projects/chicagoretail/wardstore.htm
https://www.chicagohistory.org/montgomery-ward/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Ward
https://archive.org/details/catalogueno13spr00mont
