I'll miss the Canadian Tire catalogue.
Sure, a version will still exist online--where, according to the company, an ever-increasing number of consumers go to do their research and purchasing. And I certainly appreciate the environmental benefits of discontinuing a catalogue: it's been estimated this will save thirty thousand trees a year.
But I'll still miss it.
A real-life paper catalogue is one of life's little joys, and infinitely more convenient that any online offering, especially for those people with slower-than-lightspeed connections. Call me a curmudgeon if you will: even though probably spend too much time online, I much prefer actually holding printed matter in my hands. Even the sharpest screen resolution can't compare to black ink on white paper. There's even something about the smell of the ink that gives a little thrill.
As for buying stuff online, unless it's a book I can read offline, count me out. It's not the security I'm afraid of: I trust online retailers not to drain my bank account. It's that I like to be able to look at the stuff I'm spending money on. Look at it from all angles and in three dimensions, maybe touch it if I feel like it.
(I read somewhere recently that some people are buying houses sight unseen, unless you count a "virtual tour". Astonishment doesn't even begin to describe my reaction to that. For me--and I've lived in a lot of houses--the atmosphere of the place is at least as important as all that stuff you can see online. I've stood in houses that just felt wrong. Not haunted, or anything like that--okay, maybe haunted. But--well, take the house I'm living in now. We weren't even supposed to see it; the agent had a policy of not even showing houses with electric heat, and his assistant had made a mistake and included this one on our itinerary. It was, in fact, the first one we saw. And it was the only one that felt like home. We bought it soon after we determined that electric heat wasn't half the bugaboo everybody thinks it is.)
Sears will probably be next. Sooner or later I imagine newspapers will follow suit. Progress. It isn't always an improvement.
1 comment:
Progress. It isn't always an improvement.
A-freakin-men.
I have mangers look at me funny when I ask them why they want to automate a process. I'm the IT guy, I should always want things on computers right?
Nope, as an IT guy I see the bad and the good of computing, sometimes the cost benefits aren't there, sometimes its just more inconvenient.
I wonder if a subscription model for print catalogues would work? It seems weird to pay for someone to advertise their stuff to you, but if the price were right, I think I'd go for it.
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