This week two of the larger players in the direct to consumer business announced that they were mailing more catalogs.

Coldwater Creek, who had been reducing circulation for years, decided they needed to find more new customers and remind their older customers that they were still around. Dennis Pence, Co-Founder & CEO, said the company will work hard to regain the market share lost in the direct business with effective marketing and catalog distribution. “We know that part of the deterioration can be attributed to a reduction in catalog mailings in response to the uncertain economic environment,” Pence said. “We believe we have the opportunity to regain the share we have lost by selectively increasing our catalog distribution.”

Zappos – the darling of the web – had done some earlier catalog testing and found strong enough results to expand their circulation. “Different people respond to different media,” said Aaron Magness, director for brand marketing and business development at Zappos.com in Henderson, Nev. “So far, an average order from the catalog is more than twice the size of an average order that began on Zappos.com”, said Cameron Brown, president at King Fish in Salem, Mass.

Just as catalogs signaled the end of retail stores, the internet was expected to signal the death of catalogs. Happily, the reports of their demise were very premature.