I have my favorite mail-order houses as well (see sidebar). Catalogs have always offered a far greater array of color and shape in flowers and foliage than many local garden centers can handle.

The internet hasn’t killed off the mail-order catalog. Discover a list of popular mail order catalogs from direct-to-consumer clothing and home brands who are banking on physical snail-mail ...

And enhance they do. Americans will receive a record number of catalogs this year – almost 18 billion. By my careful estimate, I alone have received 6,000 catalogs since mid-October.

That’s a lot of unwanted mail, says David Mizejewski of the National Wildlife Federation. David Mizejewski: And in order to make the paper for those catalogs, it requires about 53 million trees.

Still, Davison says yes, the number of printed catalogs mailed a year has declined by around 7.5 billion and the number of catalog companies by about 10,000 since the height in 2006.

As a result, each year on August 18 is - believe it or not - National Mail Order Catalog Day. Ward's catalog was a single sheet offering 163 items. By 1884, the catalog had grown to 240 pages.

Seven in 10 Americans shop from home via catalogs, on the Internet, by mail or over the phone, according to surveys by the New York-based Direct Marketing Association trade group.

JCPenney will send out 10 million copies of its Christmas Catalog this fall. The redesigned catalog will feature merchandise grouped by themes such as “gifts under $25,” “gifts for him or her,” “gifts ...

Stop unwanted junk mail catalogs. Check out Catalog Choice, a website that works directly with merchants to eliminate the unnecessary monetary and environmental expense of unwanted catalogs.

Today, 80 percent of the mail order business is specialty companies, with only 20 percent in the big general catalog sales outlets, including Sears, Roebuck and Co., J.C. Penney’s Co. Inc., and ...

To reach readers of its office supply and furniture catalogs, Chicago-based Reliable Corp. expects to spend an additional $1.7 million this year to cover last February`s postal rate increase. Consu… ...

Lenora Chu has our story. Lenora Chu: Each year, American consumers get 19 billion catalogs in the mail. But only 2 percent of those catalogs ever spur a purchase — most go straight to the trash.