6,000,000 Catalogs

Six thousand tons of paper . . . whirling through great power presses . . . using 750 Ib. of ink an hour. More than a thousand printers . . . working night and day. Machines with great mechanical fingers sorting, gathering and binding pages into books. Four hundred artists and camera men making thousands of illustrations. . . . A great battery of 200 typewriters clicking out the true story of value you read on these pages.

Thus does Montgomery Ward & Co. tell the history of its new catalog, sent out last week to 6.000,000 U. S. families. A better catalog but not so big--496 pages against autumn & winter's 606--it has sloughed off much of the traditional mail order baggage. Gone are the tall claims, the fantastic guarantees, the screaming bargains. Scattered sparingly instead throughout the catalog are neat seals: "Recommended by Ward's Bureau of Standards." But there is still the same harping on the economy of mail-order retailing, the same half-page cuts of lusty steamfitters in immaculate "Super-Pioneer" workshirts, the same "build-your-own" tractor from a Model T Ford.

For the first time Montgomery Ward distributed a large number of catalogs by hand. In addition to a saving on mailing costs, the company wished to put a personal touch into an otherwise impersonal business. And for the first time in more than a year Montgomery Ward is back in the fashion field with up-to-the-minute women's clothing departmentalized into "shops." Well aware that modern advertising has practically eliminated the old-time yokel, all merchandise has been freshened up, styles heavily stressed.

It cost Montgomery Ward more than $1 per copy to publish its only method of salesmanship. A cover and four full-page illustrations by Artist M. Leone Bracker have been added. Copies for framing can be obtained for 15-c- each. Once Montgomery Ward offered to send a reproduction of its cover free. A hundred thousand people took them up.

Prices are generally down 10 to 15% from the issue before. Examples: Women's shoes from $3.49 to $2.95, horse collars from $4.29 to $3.60, diapers from $1.20 a dozen to 83-c-. But compared to the last few semi-annual nose-dives that forced Montgomery Ward to take a $5.300,000 inventory loss in 1931 the slashes were moderate. Wall Street interpreted this price firming favorably, for Montgomery Ward, able to adjust retail levels only twice a year, must forecast accurately.

Though the annual report is yet unpublished, La Salle Street hears that the company earned between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 in the last quarter of 1932 against a loss of $4,297,000 the first nine months. Montgomery Ward executives, who almost always have a Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog on their desks, grinned at December sales figures: Montgomery Ward down 3.8% from last year, Sears, Roebuck down 17.2%. But while 1932 ended with Montgomery Ward showing a smaller drop in sales for the year than its big competitor, 17.9% against 19.3%, it also ended with Sears, Roebuck's sales of $280,000,000, a round one hundred million ahead of Montgomery Ward's. President Avery is rehabilitating and reorganizing, but General Robert E. Wood, the president of Sears, Roebuck, has not had to change his tactics or his organization.

Chicago believes there are good things in store for its big home-town enterprise. Chicago knows Sewell Lee Avery, quiet, fine-faced, Morgan-picked president & chairman of Montgomery Ward, who is reported to have worked wonders his first full year in command.

His business sagacity is founded largely on his ability to pick the right man for the right job. That was precisely what Montgomery Ward needed most. With 500 retail stores needing capable management the personnel problem was acute.

Personnel was not so pressing in the mail-order division. After 250,000 copies of the new catalog were off the press, the company decided to tell not only the story of the catalog but also the story of an order:

Fast mail trains . . . huge letter bags, bearing hundreds of thousands of orders . . . lightning fast machines opening envelopes with a single scissors' stroke . . . miles of pneumatic tubes carrying orders to a score of departments . . . vast aisles of ready merchandise . . . your order filled . . . checked . . . placed on great moving belts . . . rushed down spiral carriers to shipping rooms . . . for packing, labeling, stamping . . . other great mail bags . . . fast mail trains . . . your order is at your door.

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