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43-736: Park Seed Company got its start in 1868 when 15-year-old George Watt Park decided to sell seeds he had harvested from his backyard garden in Libonia, Pennsylvania . Park bought a hand press and printed a list of the seeds that he wanted to sell. In addition to circulating this list to friends and neighbors, he also bought an advertisement in The Rural American for $ 3.50. The ad resulted in $ 6.50 in seed orders. With this success, Park found his life's work. Park Seed Company published its first small catalog in 1868. The book contained just 8 pages and used 2 illustrations—wood cuts of an aster and

86-606: A pansy . In 1871, Park Seed initiated a monthly publication called The Floral Gazette . The publication was more magazine than catalog and offered its readers a forum for sharing gardening experiences and a seed exchange column that encouraged readers to trade seeds, bulbs and plants. It also carried a significant amount of advertising, including ads from other purveyors of seed. By 1877, the name had changed to Park’s Floral Magazine and circulation had grown to 20,000. By 1918, that figure hit 800,000. The growing number of catalogs brought in increasing numbers of orders, and by 1900, it

129-631: A catalog there in 1923. The Parks liked living in Florida but discovered that their seeds would not keep fresh in the heat and humidity. They then moved to Mary’s hometown of Greenwood. Park died in 1935. Mary continued to run the company during the Great Depression and World War II , while raising their two boys. Until the time of her death in 1975, she remained true to her husband's business philosophy: “Your success and pleasure are more to Park than your money.” Mail order Mail order

172-410: A corner of her garden. He successfully grew a variety of plants and learned how to harvest his own seeds . When Park was 15, he bought a hand press and printed a list of seeds that he had harvested and wanted to sell. In addition to giving the list to friends and neighbors, he also bought an advertisement in The Rural American for $ 3.50, that resulted in $ 6.50 in orders. Park’s first catalog

215-464: A knighthood. In 1845, Tiffany's Blue Book was the first mail-order catalogue in the United States. In 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward of Chicago produced a mail-order catalogue for his Montgomery Ward mail order business. By buying goods and then reselling them directly to customers, Aaron Montgomery Ward was consequently removing the middlemen at the general store and to the benefit of

258-727: A large old house. Then in 1950, they made a move to a more modern storefront location and entered the era of environmental control for seed quality. Eventually, Park Seed obtained 500 acres (2 km²) on the northern edge of Greenwood near Hodges, and designed and built there a total business complex to house the company’s offices, research facilities, seed storage and processing areas, temperature-controlled areas for storing plants and bulbs, computer facilities, mailorder department, and customer service facility, plus its catalog preparation area and an area for its wholesale division. The core buildings of this campus were completed in 1961. The company resides there today, continually expanding and renewing

301-608: A local draper in Newtown, Wales , he took over the business in 1856 and renamed it the Royal Welsh Warehouse, selling local Welsh flannel . The establishment of the Uniform Penny Post in 1840, and the extension of the railway network , helped Pryce-Jones to eventually turn his small rural concern into a company with global renown. Customers were able to order by mail for the first time—this following

344-458: A mail-order operation. Thus J.C. Penney entered the mail order catalogue business. J.C. Penney, a latecomer in catalogue operations, was different from many of its competitors because it had a large retail store base before launching into the mail-order business. The first J.C. Penney catalogue was mailed the next year in 1963. Customers could order from the catalogue inside J.C. Penney stores in eight states. The J.C. Penney Catalog Distribution Center

387-471: A printed catalogue. Year Mail Order Catalogues were founded The objective of the direct marketing industry is to alter the sales distribution chain, in other words [bypass] the wholesaler and the retailer and go directly to the customer, reducing therefore tariffs and taxes. In the European Union, a " VAT union " is in force: the merchant selling to a buyer in a different EU member country adds

430-427: Is credited as being the pioneer of a global mail order industry now worth about £75bn. Forget the internet and delivery drivers, Pryce-Jones used the superhighway of the day—the railway and parcel post. —"The mail-order pioneer who started a billion-pound industry", BBC News , December 2020. The Welsh entrepreneur Pryce Pryce-Jones set up the first mail-order company in 1861. Starting off as an apprentice to

473-402: Is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as: Then, the products are delivered to the customer. The products are usually delivered directly to an address supplied by the customer, such as a home address, but occasionally the orders are delivered to a nearby retail location for

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516-752: Is the earliest still surviving mail-order business, established by Alfred Hammacher in New York City in 1848. Offering mechanic's tools and builder's hardware, its first catalogue was published in 1881. T. Eaton Co. Limited was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant. The first Eaton's catalogue was a 34-page booklet issued in 1884. As Eaton's grew, so did the catalogue. By 1920, Eaton's operated mail order warehouses in Winnipeg, Toronto and Moncton to serve its catalogue customers. Catalogue order offices were also established throughout

559-575: The UPC plus shipping and handling to get a product made especially for the company. In 1498, the publisher Aldus Manutius of Venice printed a catalogue of the books he was printing. In 1667, the English gardener William Lucas published a seed catalogue, which he mailed to his customers to inform them of his prices. Catalogues spread to British America , where Benjamin Franklin is believed to have been

602-631: The Columbia Record Club, the magazine subscription card, and the American Express Customer Rewards program. With the invention of the Internet, a company's website became the more usual way to order merchandise for delivery by mail. Unless the retailer provides a paper catalogue from which to order, that is if the products are mainly presented to and searched for by the customer on a web site or mobile app,

645-652: The Internet, in some cases with a PDF or tablet application which allows shoppers to browse an electronic catalog that resembles a paper one very closely, though by the late 2010s this has become increasingly rare, and product information is presented in a format designed for the Web and mobile apps, rather than a PDF. Rising paper, printing, and postage costs have caused some traditional catalogue merchants, such as Bloomingdale's , to suspend their printed catalogues and sell only through websites. Also, while some Internet merchants are or were also catalogue merchants, many have never had

688-535: The Park family moved to Dunedin, Florida , and produced a catalog there in 1923. Unfortunately, while the family enjoyed Florida , the heat and humidity proved to be highly unsuitable for storing seeds. In looking for a better environment for the business, they settled on Mary’s hometown of Greenwood, South Carolina , and moved the business there in 1924. For the first 25 years in Greenwood, Park Seed Company occupied

731-545: The U.S., Mexico and Europe. During one of his trips, he stopped to visit Mary Barratt in Greenwood, South Carolina , who had written to him for advice on teaching horticulture to housewives ; the two subsequently began exchanging letters. What began as friendship based on their common interest in plants, blossomed into love and they were married in 1918. The couple and their two sons, George Barratt Park and William John Park, eventually moved to Dunedin, Florida , and printed

774-627: The US and British colonies , amassing 200,000 customers around the UK and the world. One of his most popular products was the Euklisia Rug , the forerunner of the modern sleeping bag, which Pryce-Jones exported around the world, at one point landing a contract with the Russian Army for 60,000 rugs. By 1880, he had more than 100,000 customers in the UK alone and his success was rewarded in 1887 with

817-545: The VAT of his own country to the price, and the buyer pays no additional tax. A buyer for resale may deduct that VAT, just as with purchases made within their own country. Up until June 21, 2018, mail order retailers in the United States operated with the advantage of not being required to collect state sales tax , unless the retailer's business had a physical presence in the customer's state . Instead, most states required

860-642: The company was producing a 532-page catalogue with the largest variety of items that anybody at the time could have imagined. "In 1893, the sales topped 400,000 dollars. Two years later they exceeded 750,000 dollars." In 1906 Sears opened its catalogue plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower . And by that time, the Sears catalogue had become known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". In 1933, Sears, Roebuck and Co. produced

903-593: The complex to meet changing requirements. Wayside Gardens, an Ohio company founded in 1920, was acquired by Park Seed in 1975 and was moved to South Carolina. The Park family ran the company until 2005, when it was sold to Florida real estate executive Donald Hachenberger. The company has been bought and sold since and is now a division of Jackson & Perkins Park Acquisitions, which is a subsidiary of publicly traded Western Capital Resources. Jackson & Perkins Park Acquisitions encompasses three garden brands Park Seed, Jackson & Perkins, and Wayside Gardens as well as

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946-416: The country, allowing people to choose the items they wished and order them via post; he would then dispatch the goods to the customer via the railways, promising next-day delivery . It was an ideal way of meeting the needs of customers in isolated rural locations who were either too busy or unable to get into Newtown to shop directly. This was the world's first mail order business, an idea which would change

989-552: The country, with the first opening in Oakville in 1916. Richard Warren Sears started a business selling watches through mail order catalogues in Redwood Falls, Minnesota , in 1888. By 1894, the Sears catalogue had grown to 322 pages, featuring sewing machines , bicycles , sporting goods , automobiles (produced from 1905–1915 by Lincoln Motor Car Works of Chicago, not related to the current Ford Motor Company brand of

1032-411: The creation of a powerful global network that came to include everything from mail order, to telemarketing and social media. Mail order changed the worldwide marketplace by introducing the concept of privacy and individuality into the retail industry. Today, the mail order catalogue industry is worth approximately 100 billion dollars and generates over 2 trillion in incremental sales. Sir John Moores

1075-499: The creation of the modern postal service and the invention of the postage stamp ( Penny Black ) where there was a charge of one penny for carriage and delivery between any two places in the United Kingdom irrespective of distance—and the goods were delivered throughout the UK via the newly created railway system. In 1861, Pryce-Jones hit upon a unique method of selling his wares. He distributed catalogues of his wares across

1118-466: The customer to pick up. Some merchants also allow the goods to be shipped directly to a third party consumer, which is an effective way to send a gift to an out-of-town recipient. Some merchants delivered the goods directly to the customer via their travelling agents. A mail order catalogue is a publication containing a list of general merchandise from a company. Companies who publish and operate mail order catalogues are referred to as cataloguers within

1161-574: The customer, lowering the prices drastically. His first catalogue was a single sheet of paper with a price list, 8 by 12 inches, showing the merchandise for sale and ordering instructions. Montgomery Ward identified a market of merchant-wary farmers in the Midwest. Within two decades, his single-page list of products grew into a 540-page illustrated book selling over 20,000 items. From about 1921 to 1931, Ward sold prefabricated kit houses , called Wardway Homes, by mail order. Hammacher Schlemmer

1204-471: The first cataloguer. In 1744 he produced a catalogue of scientific and academic books. In 1833, Antonio Fattorini started a mail order watch club in Bradford, which would eventually transform into Empire Stores. Pryce-Jones could only dream of the impact his entrepreneurial vision would have on the world when he was selling Welsh flannel to Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale in the late 1800s. Jones

1247-439: The first of its famous Christmas catalogues known as the " Sears Wishbook ", a catalogue featuring toys and gifts and separate from the annual Christmas catalogue. From 1908 to 1940, Sears also sold kit houses by mail order, selling 70,000 to 75,000 such homes, many of which are still lived in today. By creating a direct marketing industry through the mail order catalogue, Pryce Pryce-Jones and Aaron Montgomery Ward enabled

1290-614: The hardware brand Van Dykes Restorers. In 2010, Blackstreet Capital agreed to acquire Park Seed Company for $ 12.8 million. George Watt Park George Watt Park (1853 – 1935) was an American businessman who founded the Geo. W. Park Seed Company, Inc., now known as Park Seed Company . Park was born in 1853, in Libonia, Pennsylvania , one of seven children. While just a young child, he demonstrated great interest in horticulture , and his mother encouraged him to raise flowers in

1333-565: The homely folk of this country help them to obtain some of the profits made by manufacturing and trading... to save money on things they must have. This Catalogue is our Ship... staffed by an All-British crew... You won't find sleepy, old-fashioned goods carried in the LITTLEWOODS ship. Only the newest of the new goods—honest, British-made merchandise." With the success of the catalogue business, Moores moved his business four times to larger buildings in 1932. Moores sailed to America to look at

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1376-451: The industry. Cataloguers buy or manufacture goods then market those goods to prospects (prospective customers). Cataloguers may "rent" names from list brokers or cooperative databases . The catalogue itself is published in a similar fashion as any magazine publication and distributed through a variety of means, usually via a postal service and the internet. Sometimes supermarket products do mail order promotions, whereby people can send in

1419-448: The name of the monthly magazine to Park's Floral Magazine in 1877, and raised the subscription price to 50 cents a year to cover increased postal rates, thousands of loyal readers still felt they were getting a bargain. In 1882, Park left his business to attend Michigan State University , where he graduated four years later with a degree in horticulture. Park returned to his business, which continued to grow at Libonia, Pennsylvania. By

1462-478: The nature of retail in the coming century. The further expansion of the railways in the years that followed allowed Pryce Jones to greatly expand his customer base and his business grew rapidly. He supplied his products to an impressive variety of famous clientele, including Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria , the Princess of Wales and royal households across Europe. He also began exporting drapery to

1505-485: The operations of Montgomery Ward and Sears and Roebuck. By 1936, the business had hit the 4 million pound mark, making Moores a millionaire a second time over, by mail order. James Cash Penney started his first retail store in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming. By 1925, J.C. Penney had 674 stores generating sales of $ 91 million. In 1962 J.C. Penney bought Wisconsin based General Merchandise Company with discount stores and

1548-432: The same name ) and a host of other new items. Organizing the company so it could handle orders on an economical and efficient basis, Chicago clothing manufacturer Julius Rosenwald became a part-owner in 1895. By the following year, dolls , refrigerators , stoves and groceries had been added to the catalog. Sears, Roebuck and Co. soon developed a reputation for high quality products and customer satisfaction. By 1895,

1591-427: The term "mail order" is rarely used to describe the ordering of goods over the Internet. It is more usual to refer to this as e-commerce or online shopping. Online shopping allows more detailed information (including audio and video) to be presented, and allows for faster ordering than by mailed form (though phone orders are also common for mail-order catalogues). Most traditional mail order companies now also sell over

1634-560: The turn of the century, the company had outgrown the second-class post office at Libonia and, in 1902, moved to La Park . Park began to travel, searching for new and better varieties of seeds and plants. From the Deep South , he acquired unusual semi-tropical plants and from the West he brought back many forms of cactus , that he propagated and offered to his customers. Park entertained his readers with accounts of his adventures across

1677-652: Was a British businessman and philanthropist most famous for the founding of the Littlewoods retail company that was located in Liverpool , England . Moores became a millionaire through the creation of the Littlewood Pool, one of the best-known names in sports gambling in England. In January 1932, Moores was able to disengage himself sufficiently from the pools to start up Littlewoods Mail Order Store. This

1720-412: Was clear that the business had outgrown the small post office at Libonia. Park Seed Company moved to La Park (now Paradise), Pennsylvania in 1902. In 1918, Park married Carol Mary Barratt, a young county home demonstration agent from South Carolina. Barrat(Park) moved to La Park and became both a partner in the business and the mother of two sons: George Barratt Park and William John Park. Eventually

1763-739: Was followed on July 6, 1937 by the opening of the first Littlewoods department store in Blackpool . By the time World War II started there were 25 Littlewoods stores across the UK and over 50 by 1952. The first Littlewoods catalogue was published in May 1932 with 168 pages. Its motta was: "We hoist our Flag in the Port of Supply, and right away we sail to the Ports of Demand—the Homes of the People. We intend to help

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1806-513: Was located in Milwaukee. Catalogues through the ages Mail order had always relied on the innovative technique of selling products directly to the consumer at appealing prices, but the term " direct marketing " was only coined in 1967, by Lester Wunderman — considered to be the father of contemporary direct marketing. He was behind the creation of the toll-free 1-800 number and numerous mail order based loyalty marketing programs including

1849-431: Was published in 1868; it contained eight pages and used two illustrations, woodcuts of an aster and a pansy. In 1871, Park started a monthly magazine, The Floral Gazette , in which he offered gardening advice and created a forum where people could write in to share gardening experiences and trade seeds, bulbs and plants. Circulation of the magazine grew to 20,000 in 1877, and to over 800,000 by 1918. Although Park changed

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