I found a really fantastic brochure in a junk store during one of my trips to the UK. It’s an “Ogden and Lawson” catalog from the 1930’s, describing their range of steam fittings and valves – prefect for a technology nerd like me! It’s hard-bound with a couple of wonderful, colorized pages showing valve cross sections. There are also printed prices for every item.

Think about that – a hard-bound brochure with pricing that the publishers fully expected to stay current for, how long, 1 year, 3 years, 10 years? When the only means of communication to your customers was by mail, it was worth spending a bit more on the brochure knowing that they were going to keep it and refer to it for years. Fast forward to 2010 – when the internet rules and it seems that prices change on a daily basis, surely there’s no need for printed materials. Can’t all the relevant info be taken off a website somewhere? (more…)