MATERIAL WORLD22 MARCH 2020WHY RESTORATION HARDWARE
SENDS CATALOGS
THE SIZE OF A TODDLER
The surprising persistence of the mail-order business
BY AMANDA MULLW
hen you enter
the RH (for-
m erly Restora-
tion Hardware)
megastore in
New York City’s
Meatpacking District, you
might think it’s a place to
buy furniture. Technically it
is, with tens of thousands of
square feet filled with dining-
room sets and king-size beds
and couches, upholstered in
shades of gray and beige and
beiger, and accessorized with
plush rugs and metal-armed
lamps. Or maybe you’ll mis-
take it for a hotel lobby, with
its high ceilings, ample seating,
and smiling concierge.
But on either side of the
store’s broad central path,
you’ll see its true spiritual, if
not practical, purpose: as a
temple to the high-end furni-
ture chain’s in famous “source
books.” On twin circular tables
large enough for an extended
family’s Thanksgiving dinner
(yours for $7,995 each), eight
different editions sit in neat
stacks and offer inspiration
tailored to ski chalets, beachgetaways, or nurseries for rich
babies, depending on the tome.
Bathed in golden light from
enormous $12,000 chande-
liers, the gods of direct-mail
marketing beckon enticingly
from their “carbonized split
bamboo” altars.
The biggest of RH’s 2019
catalogs was 730 glossy pages—
from a few feet away, you
might think it’s the September
issue of Vogue. The company
would not reveal how much it
spends on the lavish compen-
diums, but in 2012, an indus-
try expert estimated that they
would require a multimillion-
dollar budget, with each indi-
vidual book costing as much as
$3 to print and ship—a figure
that doesn’t include the tab for
photography or page design.
RH’s catalogs, and its price
points, were similar to Pot-
tery Barn’s and Crate & Bar-
rel’s until the late aughts, when
the source books and opu-
lently appointed stores began
to be introduced. Both are
part of what longtime Chair-
man and CEO Gary Friedman
has described as a strategy toproject abundance and turn
the heads of wealthy custom-
ers; apparently, it’s worked. In
2001, the company was teeter-
ing on the edge of bankruptcy.
While there have been bumps
along the way, RH’s sales since
then have increased dramati-
cally, and in December its stock
price hit an all-time high.
All the pageantry for cata-
logs might seem puzzling, given
that print media and retail
stores are struggling to compete
with the infotainment hub of
the smartphone. But although
the number of catalogs mailed
in America has fallen since its
high of 19 billion in 2007, an
estimated 11.5 billion were
still sent in 2018. As retailers
become ever more desperate
to find ways to sell their stuff
without tithing to the tech
behemoths, America might
be entering a golden age of
the catalog.“The rumors of my
demise are greatly exagger-
ated,” says Hamilton Davi-
son, the executive director of
the American Catalog MailersAssociation, which advocates
for things like favorable post-
age rates and tax rules. “Isn’t
that what Mark Twain said?”
In the late 2000s, a change in
federal regulation raised mail-
ing prices for catalogs, and
as online shopping acceler-
ated in the years afterward, a
lot of companies abandoned
catalogs in favor of email and
social-media strategies target-
ing younger consumers. Those
retailers included companies
known for their direct-mail
products, such as JC Penney,
whose catalog had figured
prominently in its branding
since 1963 but was discontin-
ued in 2010.
Five years later, though,
the JCPenney catalog was
back, in defeated recognition
that the physical world still
matters. “You can’t make me
open your email, you can’t
make me open your website,
you can’t make me go to your
retail store, but you can send a
large-format mail piece I have
to pick up,” Davison says. “It’s
invasive, but it’s welcome.”
Davison has a vested interest