As the holiday season kicks into gear, retailers are scaling down their holiday catalogs to pamphlets in response to rising postal rates and evolving consumer habits.
With consumers gearing up to do some holiday shopping this year, Lands’ End, Duluth Trading Company, and Hammacher Schlemmer are among the many brands opting for smaller, postcard-like formats in a bid to cut postage and paper expenses.
The downsizing trend reflects broader shifts in marketing as the once staple of American living rooms, thick catalogs from brands like Sears and J.C. Penney have dwindled and been replaced by compact mailings and digital platforms.
Lisa Ayoob, a tech-savvy shopper from Portland, Maine, noted the size difference as she was taken aback by a recent catalog from outdoor apparel company Carbon2Cobalt.
“It almost felt like it was a pamphlet compared to a catalog,” she told the Associated Press.
The shift comes as recent postal hikes have pushed brands to adopt smaller formats. The latest round of postage hikes was in July, with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) increasing the price by 7.8 percent and impacted the category with the 8.5-by-11-inch size that used to be ubiquitous for the catalog industry.
