Catalog Shopping

I Like Catalog buying :

I have always liked shopping through catalogs. I really dislike going to crowded stores and having to deal with other shoppers.  Going to the big “MART” stores can save you money, but I dislike going to them.

Going to a big Mart store in our area means you will have to deal with shopping with extended family herds. The family herd is usually 2 to 5 adults and 6 to 8 kids. While the adults do their shopping, the kids run around, mess and open products, horse around, scream and yell, and block the paths through the store. The adults do not or can not watch and control them.

As a result many of the products have had to be re boxed and packaged. I try not to buy any package that looks like it was reassembled…there are almost always parts missing. That and having few store employees to help and having to shop around noisy kids make the store shopping undesirable.

With a catalog you do not have to deal with family herds. The shipping fees on something you buy, I figure would be about what you would spend on gas going to the store. If you have a question you can call and almost always talk to someone about it…and the call will take no longer then trying to find an store worker who will not know the info anyway. Most things I buy these days are not a rush item to me, so a few days shipping in not a problem.

With a Catalog you can shop when you are in the bathroom.  It is multitasking at its best 8-). My granddad always had old catalogs in the outhouse. He would shop when he was taking a break at the farm, and the catalogs also had another use. He always said the worst thing Sears did was to go with slicky pages!

Tool catalogs and gardening catalogs are always around our house. I do not need any more tools, I have multiples of most things, but I still like to look. My wife being a Master Gardener is always checking tool and seed catalogs to see what is new and to get new ideas.

My mother and sister were catalog buyers so I come by it naturally. We lived in a small farm town and it was a 40 mile trip to any “real” stores. My wife lived on her boat and cruised for a number of years, so catalogs were also the easiest way to shop.

On line catalogs are almost as good, but with them you can not circle the item so you can come back to it easily. I also dislike using the laptop in the bathroom 8-).  (Think about having your laptop camera on in there.)

Shopping through a catalog also decreases impulse buying. You don’t just put it in your cart and check out as in a store. You have to think about it a little and order it before you buy it. 

We have two on line business, The Seven Seas Lighting, and The Digital Compass Shop. They both have on line catalogs to shop from and we are trying to make them user friendly.  We try to ship products at no charge when possible, and for those products that have a shipping charge; we will refund the charge if the buyer sends us an evaluation of the product.  We have tried to pick the better products for our sites, so we have happy customers.