The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 1872–1900
Montgomery Ward's 1872 catalog brought the store to the farm and created mail order
Aaron Montgomery Ward mailed a one-sheet list of 163 items to rural customers in 1872 with a money-back guarantee; the catalog had 3,000 items by 1876.
Montgomery Ward
the move
In 1872 Aaron Montgomery Ward, a Chicago dry-goods salesman, launched the country's first general mail-order business. His first catalog was a single sheet listing 163 items, sent to farmers' cooperatives across the rural Midwest.
The pitch was simple: buy in bulk wholesale and sell directly to the farm family, cutting out the country store's markup, and back every sale with 'satisfaction guaranteed or your money back' — an industry first.
Rural customers who had never had choice or price transparency responded fast. The catalog grew to 32 pages by 1874 and 152 pages with 3,000 items by 1876; by the early 1900s the mailing list passed three million subscribers.
Ordering by mail turned the catalog itself into a store that travelled to the customer — clothing, tools, even entire houses — and the Chicago mail-order house that fulfilled it became one of the largest buildings in the world.
why it works
- It gave isolated farmers wholesale prices and a real choice for the first time.
- The money-back guarantee removed the biggest objection to buying sight unseen.
- Mail order needed no storefront per town, so one Chicago warehouse served a continent.
- The catalog compounded: more subscribers meant bigger buying power and lower prices.
what transfers
If customers cannot reach you, send the offer to them; a credible return guarantee converts suspicion into the first order, and trust becomes the moat.
what came after
Montgomery Ward's formula built one of America's largest retailers: by the early 1930s it had over 500 stores, and in 1939 its copywriter created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for a holiday giveaway. The company issued its last mail-order catalog in 1985 and filed for bankruptcy in 1997, but the catalog industry it created — from Sears to e-commerce — outlived it.
references
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