Online shopping.
No crowds, no icy parking lots, no cranky
checkers, no lines, no lugging heavy items to your vehicle. We have a world of
items at our fingertips. Nearly anything can be delivered overnight if we’re
willing to pay shipping. Our forefathers couldn’t have dreamed of the ease with which we
shop today. We are a spoiled generation, and I don’t know about you, but I take
advantage of it.
Even as early as the 1800s one savvy businessman was
thinking up a way to take merchandise to people across the country.
The
Montgomery Ward catalog is known as one of the most influential American books
ever published. The Grolier Club stated: "The mail order catalog has been
perhaps the greatest single influence in increasing the standard of American
living. It brought the benefit of wholesale prices to city and hamlet, to the
crossroads and prairie."
Aaron Montgomery Ward was born in Chatham, New Jersey in
1844. His family traveled west to Niles, Michigan in 1853 where his father took
up the cobbler's trade. Aaron left school at fourteen to work in brickyards and
a barrel factory where he learned his most valuable lesson: "I learned I
was not physically or mentally suited for brick or barrel making." Gotta
love this guy. He was the Bill Gates of yesteryear.
After clerking at a shoe store
and then a country store where he earned six dollars a month plus board, he was
ready to go to the big city. Apparently he wasn’t physically or mentally suited
for retail work either.
In the 1850s Chicago was home to
thirty thousand people and known, none too affectionately, as "The Mudhole
of the Prairies." The streets were barely above the level of Lake Michigan
and covered with bottomless goo. But by the late 1860s Chicago was teeming with post-Civil War
energy. Fifteen railroad lines moved 150 trains a day out of the busy terminals.
Like thousands of other young men, Ward arrived in Chicago in 1866 and began
work in various dry goods firms, including one operated by Marshall Field. He
became a salesman, his income rising to the princely sum of twelve whole
dollars a week.
As he made his tedious rounds
through the mud in his horse and buggy he took notice of the country stores.
While they were friendly places with potbelly stoves and made fine meeting
places for local farmers, they were far from friendly when the farmers had to
actually buy something. Selection was small and prices were high. The
storekeeper was at the mercy of the big city wholesalers. Sort of like American
consumers and the oil companies.
Ward
considered how he could help the disadvantaged farmer and decided on a mail
order store. He would set up in the big city where he could easily reach
suppliers and buy in quantity to get the best prices. A catalog listing his
prices would be sent to farmers who would then receive their order by mail,
cash on delivery. It was not a new idea but the few direct mail firms at the
time sold only one or two items. Ward was going to bring the whole store to the
farmer.
Ward
worked and saved. He talked about his idea with friends and associates. The naysayers
claimed he would go broke trying to sell goods sight-unseen to back country
folk, but he was not dissuaded. By 1871 he finally saved enough money to buy a
small amount of goods at wholesale prices.
As luck (or bad luck) would have it, on October 8, 1871 the Great
Chicago Fire engulfed the city for thirty hours. Every building in a four
square mile area was destroyed, and along with them…Ward's inventory.
He was
not discouraged. By August 1872 he had scraped up money and convinced a few
people to join him, raising sixteen hundred dollars in working capital. He
printed up a one-page price list and hand addressed the first circulars to the
Grangers, a co-operative farm supply organization. One of his earliest
pricelists contained 163 items under the banner "Supplied By The Cheapest
Cash House In America." Most of the items cost one dollar, even the
clothing, a 6-view stereoscope, and a backgammon set.
For
most of 1873, Ward's mailbox was bare. By then his partners wanted out, and
Ward, who still had his sales job, managed to buy them out of their small
investments. The panic of 1873 was quickly sinking established traditional
retailers, let alone his radical enterprise. His business was ridiculed by the Chicago Tribune as a
disreputable firm "hidden from public gaze with no merchandise displayed
and reachable only through the post office." Under threat of a lawsuit,
the Tribune
printed a retraction. The retraction was added to the next flyer and sales
increased.
About
this time, ready-made clothing began appearing. It was always believed that no
two people had the same measurements, and tailors were needed to make quality
clothes. But the crunch for uniforms in the Civil War had demonstrated that
certain combinations of measurements could be standardized. Ward told his
faraway customers: "Give your age and describe your general build and we
will nine times out of ten give you a fit."
Ward, a
short, stout man, wrote all the early copy. He always included a message in his
catalogs, often educating the reader about buying and selling. "It is best
to make your order around five dollars. Shipping charges on small orders will
eat up your savings. Consider joining a buying club with your neighbors."
How smart was this guy?
As
consumers came to trust Ward's unseen store, business grew rapidly. He bound
his first catalog in 1874 and in 1875 the book grew to seventy-two pages. Ward
began to worry he might become too big and took an ad in Farmers Voice just to
reassure his customers he had not lost touch with their needs.
In 1893
Ward sold controlling interest to George R. Thorne who had come on as a partner
late in 1873. Ward remained president, but after a while he stopped attending
board meetings. The last twenty years of his life were spent preserving the
Chicago waterfront as a park for the people. He spent over two hundred thousand
dollars of his own money to defend the public's right to open space.
His long-time efforts to prevent
the erection of buildings along Lake Michigan won him the title of "The
Watch Dog of the Lake Front." At one time there were forty-six building
projects planned in the park and he fought them all successfully, losing many
influential friends along the way. Finally, just before his death in 1913 he
won his final legal battle to forever keep the waterfront an open area. He was
sixty nine years old.
The Tribune,
no friend of Montgomery Ward, wrote: "We know now that Mr. Ward was right,
was farsighted, was public spirited. That he was unjustly criticized as a
selfish obstructionist or as a fanatic. Before he died, it is pleasant to think
Mr. Ward knew that the community had swung round to his side and was grateful
for the service he had performed in spite of misunderstanding and
injustice."
It was the men and women with unwavering
belief in their ideas and innovations that broke ground for the rest of the
country. Sears Roebuck and Bloomingdales followed with catalog merchandise, and
to this day we still receive catalogs in the mail for seeds, lingerie, hunting
gear, and all manner of merchandise.
When you think about it, ebay is a gigantic
online catalog with auction sales. Amazon is an amazing online catalog of every
book, song, movie etc. available—plus clothing, groceries and nonperishable
items (I use their subscribe & save for numerous things), electronics, and
the list goes on to infinity. What would Mr. Ward have thought? Craigslist is
an online local catalog of the good things people are selling. Have I ever
mentioned how much I love Craigslist? Take a photo, post a listing and the next
day you have someone pay you to haul your unwanted stuff away. What a deal. I
even order photo prints online.
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