After 25 years of offering analysis of developments in the direct marketing business, the Non Store Marketing Report has closed down.
The last edition of the newsletter reached subscribers two weeks ago.
Maxwell Sroge, the founder and the primary contributor to the publication, cited poor health over the last year as the reason for the shutdown. “I just don’t feel like I can continue with it,” he said.
Based in Evanston, IL, the Non Store Marketing Report published every two weeks. Its format never varied from the first edition. The newsletter offered four pages filled with content on about 20 different issues along with two profiles of leading companies in the mail order industry, Sroge said. The publication was delivered to subscribers by mail and only this year was available via e-mail.
“It was pretty accurate in predicting some key developments like Montgomery Ward and Sears going out of the catalog business and the failure of several e-commerce businesses like living.com and pets.com,” Sroge said. “We tried to be a behind-the-scenes reporter of key happenings.”
Sroge has been a consultant in the direct mail business since 1966. He was president of the original Robert Maxwell Co., a subsidiary of Bell & Howell Co. in Lincolnwood, IL, which was among the first brand-name marketers to go into the direct mail business with its own products, Sroge said.
In the spring of 1999, Maxwell Sroge Co. set up a Web site (http://www.catalog-news.com) for catalog industry professionals to find jobs at no cost. The site also provides past information from the Non Store Marketing Reports such as information on the best catalogs of the month, profile analyses covering 200 different leading mail order companies, as well as a wide variety of pages providing advice on operating catalog businesses. The site is still active, Sroge said.
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