The mail-order industry consists of firms that circulate catalogues of merchandise directly to customers, who in turn order merchandise by mail or telephone. This industry now consists of some twelve thousand firms, most of them small specialty businesses. Even the larger firms in the industry are at current relatively fragmented, though some consolidation is underway.
After rapid growth in the 1980s, the mail-order industry has stagnated in the 1990s. However, this stagnation should be regarded as a pause that will be followed by further long-term growth. The mail-order industry combines the advantage for firms of being able to target their sales efforts to likely customers with the advantage for customers of being able to shop at home. Moreover, the industry is potentially well-positioned to take advantage of future developments in interactive home technology.
The mail-order industry is highly unconcentrated, consisting for the most part of small specialty firms; out of nearly twelve thousand firms issuing mail-order catalogues, most had revenue volumes of less than one million dollars annually. The 1994 Catalog Survey, published by Bruce, Dean and Co. (1995, p. 11) identified 11,973 firms, of which only 67 had known sales volumes of over 100 million dollars. Of these, only six had sales of over one billion dollars. At the other end of the scale, 1,227 firms reported volumes between $1.0 and $2.4 million. The vast majority of firms -- 9,162 -- reported no sales figures, but most had fewer than five employees, and probably have sales volumes of less than a million dollars. The industry consists of two main sectors; those selling directly to consumers (86 percent of the total) and those selling to other businesses (14 percent of the total). The firms reporting to the Bruce, Dean survey were somewhat more heavily slanted toward business-to-business firms, and the survey also identified a hybrid category of firms repor...