Catalogue Cornucopia

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Look, no legwork! The insidious magic of shopping by mail and phone

Dearest Kids:

Hot news!

This year Xmas is going to be on the mailman. During the entire holiday stampede, we do not intend to stick one toe out of the house to buy anything. (Well, maybe the odd beaker of Beefeater, says Father.) Has doddering senility finally overtaken your parents? By no means. We have, rather, been enveloped by Efficiency, Luxury and Modernity. We have succumbed to the Mail-Order Catalogue, which in our youth was something that farmers used.

We have, in short, yielded to the telephone, the credit card and those sumptuous new Catalogues. Take your own Christmas presents. This year, for a change, they will be a) delivered on time, b) gorgeously gift-wrapped and c) exchangeable (it says here) if you don't like them.

We have also entrusted our entire yuletide banquet to the mail-order people. The menu, selected during countless toll-free calls to every imaginable part of the U.S.A., will be, we venture, Lucullan but not decadent (pricewise).

Saks Fifth Avenue has kindly consented to provide the beluga caviar (4 oz. for $88). Pepperidge Farm has prepared Father's favorite hot Bing Cherry Soup with Burgundy (in a selection of eight cans for $18.95). Hampton Farms has, especially for us, smoked a 9-lb. young torn turkey over hickory embers (only $29.95). English plum pudding ($12) is on its way from Altman's. The wines, all from good old Sherry-Lehmann 's catalogue, will go from Perrier-Jouet Grand Brut (about $20) with the caviar, to Chateau d'Yquern ($90) with the pud.

Here's to the best holiday ever! God bless RFD and U.P.S.!

Your Loving Parents

Caviar and Yquem are a minuscule part of the mail-order industry, which caters to every conceivable need of the American buyer except finding parking space, spending hours to find the objects he seeks and quite possibly dealing with surly salesclerks in jampacked retail stores. Those catalogues, offering everything from $29 anoraks to $4 Zippo lighters, have become a major factor in the U.S. economy. As subtly and sneakily as a falling nightgown strap from the Victoria's Secret lingerie catalogue, they have exerted a refreshing influence on American consumers and their style.

More than 5 billion of those catalogues will be mailed in 1982, according to the Direct Mail/Marketing Association. The average American household receives 40 catalogues a year. No wonder the U.S. Postal Service expects to post a $400 million profit this year. Mail orders will generate close to $40 billion in consumer sales, mostly from catalogues. Last year the food category alone accounted for some $465 million in purchases. While the business represents only about 4% of the $1 trillion in sales rung up by U.S. retailers, it is growing by about 15% yearly, five times as fast as over-the-counter retail sales. By 1990, mail sales are expected to account for 20% of all general merchandise sold in the U.S. To an ever increasing number of consumers with neither time nor heart for legwork shopping, thumbing through the catalogues can not only save time and money but be rewarding as well.