Sears Roebuck and Co., which began as a small catalog house in 1896 and grew into the world's largest retailer, said that Thursday was the last day to place a catalog order by telephone.
"Customer response has been so strong that catalog inventories are depleted to the point that most customer orders cannot be filled," Sears said in a statement.The first catalog in 1896 featured 532 pages of general merchandise "targeted to American farmers and their family," Sears spokesman Al Mathes said. The joke became, when you ran out of toilet paper in the outhouse, it was time to "get the big book."
Folklore said the catalog was one of two books Americans read. The other was the King James Bible.
American Farm Bureau Federation spokesman Dave Lane remembered how much the catalog meant when he was growing up on the family farm near Lafayette, Ind.
"There was always excitement when the new catalog came out. When I was a kid, that's what you made up your Christmas list for Santa Claus from. Nowadays, kids probably see on TV on Saturday morning everything there is in the way of new products. Growing up in my era, it was the Sears catalog."