Start the Presses: Catalogs are Back!

“Welcome to the party, pal!”

Yeah, I know it’s not quite that season yet to roll out a classic movie quote. But that’s the first thought that came to mind as I listened to a story about mail catalogs reported by “Marketplace” on my local public radio station this past Monday.

Now, you may want to sit down for this, because it turns out that retailers and brands are returning to the homes of consumers with actual printed and mailed catalogs in the holiday season now underway. The reporter noted that it’s becoming a trend for reasons that I’ll get to in a second.

But the next thing I thought of was “Haven’t I heard this before?” Cataloguers getting into (or returning to) the mail … it just sounded very familiar.

So I dove into my PDF archive of news items about print and mail, and sure enough, I wasn’t hallucinating.

“A Big Department Store Pivots to a Catalog”
-The New York Times, October 26, 2025

“Why some retailers are going old school and returning to catalogs”
-NBC Today Show, October 30, 2024

“J.Crew Fans, Get Ready: The Catalog Is Back”
-The Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2024

And so on and so on, going back to the early 2010s. You get the idea.

It’s gratifying to feel some validation from people outside our giant print and mail ecosystem that a focus on digital communications channels is not enough, or always the best way to deliver messages and offers to prospects or customers.

OK, sure, studies show that millennials and Gen Z have an affinity for print and analog, so appealing to those audiences is certainly a part of it. As the headline for one CNBC article (December 21, 2017) put it, “Millennials are more interested in catalogs than your grandmother is.”

The bigger question is: “Why?”

Ecommerce brands and startups want to reach customers that they may otherwise miss by using only digital channels like email or social media. As it is, we see dozens of messages (at least) each day. How many of them just flow past our eyes or disappear with a tap on a screen? How many do we keep around to look at more closely hours or days later?

If you want your company or organization’s brand to stand out from a glut of sameness that gets more expensive, a printed piece like a catalog is a good alternative.

As the radio piece pointed out, today’s catalogs are less about showing every product a company offers, and more about curating the brand. They’re a showcase that gives the prospect a place to understand more about what it represents. And it helps, as my old friend Paul Miller, managing director at the American Commerce Marketing Association (ACMA) is quoted as saying: “You know, they’re making the mail entertaining.”

Even with shorter (and more targeted) runs, fewer pages, and smaller trim sizes like slim-jims, a catalog sticks around longer, inspires and engages customers, and drives them to the web to convert. Then there’s that USPS Catalog Insights Promotion that offers substantial discounts of up to 10%, running until the end of next June.

If that isn’t reason enough to test it, I don’t know what is.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.