Just Browsing

We ran a story last month about some research that our sister magazine direct conducted with Yankelovich Partners to see how people feel about direct marketing. Apparently most of us like direct marketing and some of us — mostly older folks (ahem) — prefer to use a single channel to shop.

Well, mark me down for catalogs.

Come about August, the mailman starts bringing about six catalogs a day — everything from Hannah Andersson (kids clothes) to Harry & David (upscale noshes). It starts just when you’re sick of your summer clothes and back-to-school shopping has put you in the mood for a good browse. The timing alone is enough to distinguish direct marketers as geniuses.

Fall is the best time for catalog shopping. The mailbox is crammed with an ever-increasing crush of pre-holiday books, and chilly weather and dark evenings make the perfect environment to curl up on the couch and shop. It’s like window-shopping, with snacks.

I savor the memory of one especially serene Thanksgiving weekend, when I did all the Christmas shopping while my baby slept. I was positively smug with relief that I wouldn’t be visiting any malls with a stroller.

In the intervening 10 years, I have come to love shopping online — it’s fast, you can comparison shop really easily, you can find stuff you didn’t even know existed, you can do it in the middle of the night (much better for Christmas surprises), and you don’t have to talk to anyone. The only downfall I can see is that you can’t pay by check.

I’m in one of those ascetic moods where I vow to pay off, then cut up my Visa card, so I am back to shopping by catalog. It feels almost quaint to fill out an order form, write a check, and mail it all in. It’s an old-fashioned entertainment, like cranking ice cream by hand, or popping popcorn in a fireplace. I got two whole evenings of fun perusing the L.L. Bean catalog this week.

Now, I’m not so ascetic that I’ll pass up a new sweater, so I pulled out my pen and set in on the order form. Hmm. Only five lines; I could only have five items. And that turtleneck I wanted in two colors would take up two lines.

I muddled through until page 252 – a better turtleneck, in different colors. I crossed out the two I already filled in, then crammed two more into the last blank line on the order form.

I should apologize here to the L.L. Bean rep who’s probably still trying to read “butter yellow AND midnight” in my crabbed handwriting on that narrow column for “Color, first and second choice.” I’d like one of each, please.

CRT-SORT

The mix of catalogs I get is still a bit of a mystery to me. For some reason I am apparently a hot prospect for frou-frou. I regularly hear from Sundance, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Sturbridge Yankee Workshop — and then there’s the whole Seasons and Signals and Marshall Field’s Direct suite that Target Corp. quietly puts out with that specialty-store copy so you don’t necessarily realize they’re part of a huge mass-merchandise chain. I don’t buy much frou-frou, but I love to browse it during The Daily Show.

It’s sort of charming (and occasionally off-putting) to read those little “welcome to our family” letters from catalog founders. Sometimes they read like a bad Christmas letter — group photo and all. But when they’re done well, they feel nicely intimate. The women behind Chinaberry (kids’ books) and Motherwear (clothes for nursing moms) weave their personalities throughout their catalogs, so you almost feel like you’re hearing from an old friend. I also like to read the quick bios of the models in Title 9’s women’s sports catalogs. Anytime you’re in my town, stop by.

The weirdest catalog I ever got sold army dolls. Actually, they were painfully detailed replicas of military figures, from German SS officers to modern-day Navy Seals. There were pages and pages of tiny weapons and uniforms. It scared the hell out of me.

Thank God for the recycling bin.