When teaching a catalog course, a question that often comes up is whether you have to go through putting a catalog together yourself or if there’s anyone who will take care of all or most of the steps for you. As with many things, the answer is yes and no.
Syndicated Catalogs
Yes, you can have someone provide the merchandise, the creative and the printing. Such catalogs are most often called syndicated catalogs. The syndicator provides everything up to the list but does not cover postage, product fulfillment or customer service. The syndicator goes to a variety of manufacturers for merchandise. Those manufacturers pay the syndicator to be in the catalog. The catalog is then sold to retail stores. The most common industries where syndicated catalogs crop up are in jewelry, gifts and collectibles.
Say a jewelry catalog is supplied by the syndicator to a jeweler so the jewelry store can send the book out to its customers. In return, the store must buy the stock featured in the catalog and is charged a fee for the book. The catalog need not look just like those from other retailers; today’s technology allows users to have customized individual pages and covers.
The National Association of Limited Edition Dealers found that, when queried about syndicated catalogs,
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