Sears REALLY missed the boat on the online sales industry. They shut down their catalog operation just as that was starting up.

Wow. If I had mod points I would mod your post "Insightful".

You are so right about this. Back in the day, Sears made most of their money from mail-order sales. Sears started out as a pure mail-order business. And according to Wikipedia, Sears stopped their mail-order business in... 1993!

I remember, in my childhood, my family would drive through some small town and there would be a mini version of a Sears or a Montgomery Ward or a JC Penny, and my parents told me that those were delivery centers. Because the small towns didn't have enough business to justify stocking a bunch of inventory, these companies would build a delivery center and people could order stuff. So if you lived in one of these towns you could order clothing, pots and pans, or even big items like a refrigerator and your stuff would arrive at the delivery center on one of the regular delivery trucks. I believe the delivery center was a warehouse with a service counter and stacks of catalogs. (Paper catalogs of course.) I seem to recall there might have been a few stacks of small "impulse-buy" items, and there were a few display items (like a refrigerator) so you could see them in real life before buying one.

Now that catalogs are web pages, it's common practice to have multiple photos to really show the item from all sides, and maybe even a 3D model. But when catalogs were printed on paper, you would only get one or two photos.

These days if I want a refrigerator I can order it from a web site and get home delivery for no additional charge, but when I was a kid I'm pretty sure it would have been crazy expensive to have a refrigerator delivered. The "delivery centers" seem like an efficient way to handle deliveries of big things like refrigerators; it's actually a sign of how affluent the USA is that home delivery of big heavy items is no additional charge.

I also remember that in the 80's there was a company called Best Products, and they were sort of a hybrid of a department store and a delivery center. Like a department store they stocked a lot of inventory; but they had all their inventory in a warehouse, and had a relatively small store space that was all display items. You would find the thing you want in a paper catalog, fill out an order form, and then the people in the back would pull your items from the warehouse. I didn't shop there much but when I got married I bought the rings there (much less expensive than going to a jewelry shop).