Ebay has been feeling the growing pressure from mail order catalog companies due to their revived success in recent years. Consumers often don’t know what they want and having the luxury of flipping through pages was something Ebay just couldn’t offer, until now.
Following the success of Google’s print edition, marketing officials at Ebay knew it was time to take the next step and bring their products straight to consumers or face a wilting market shave.
The catalogs are organized alphabetically by category and mail out letter-by-letter each postal day of the month with “A” arriving around the first, “B” on the second, and ending with the special “Y-Z” issue arriving on the last day of 30-day months. Each catalog ranges from 900 to 1400 pages in length with tens of thousands of small blurry photos and vague or poorly worded descriptions.
The United States Postal Service is feeling the crunch from the new burden of delivering these massive volumes to each of Ebay’s estimated 35 million readers each day. “Out of nowhere we’re stuck carrying an additional billion catalogs every month, we’re just not equipped to deal with it,” says Post Master General Raymond Hessle adding,”we’re horribly backed up and people are furious they can’t get any of their other mail.”
Additionally, the postal service estimates almost 40% of the books are undeliverable with recipient names like BettyRVeronica, GemSmith1998, and LadyBugFan2. One anonymous source reports that “landfills are already at capacity and New Jersey will be entirely blanketed in undeliverable catalogs by the middle of August.”
Subscriber sentiments are mixed. Mary Madison of Newport Beach says she loves browsing through hundreds of pages each day looking at rare memorabilia, butt-cheek naming rights, no-access land in Wyoming gullies and discount computer supplies that may or may not exist. Kim Su Kwan from Albany complains, “It’s bad enough by the time you get it and actually find what you’re looking for that it’s long gone, but how come every other page has a bulky folding pop-up ad for half.com, car insurance and for Ebay itself? God, I’m already looking at the damn thing, why do I need to see an ad for it?”
Critics are vocal about the trillion pages of non-recyclable glossy paper shipped out monthly and the logistical nightmare it’s causing to the Library of Congress who is legally obligated to permanently archive each and every publication, but Ebay has no plans to stop. “Since we’ve rolled out the catalog Ebay sales are up over 3%. Financially this just makes sense for us and since we won’t deplete the world’s forests for another 21 months it would be crazy to stop now.
Catalogs are available by mail, at public libraries, on the ground, and in huge piles on most every street corner.