Hammacher Schlemmer: The World’S Nearly Peculiar Company

Quality. The society survives because of the character of their products.

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From Chicago Magazine:

How does catalog-loving retailer Hammacher Schlemmer, famous for such eccentric in addition to extravagant products every bit the Navigable Water Park, hold to live on inwards the historic menstruation of Amazon?

When I was growing up, my family, similar many others, got the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog delivered to our apartment. We never genuinely ordered anything from it, but I liked to daydream close belonging to a household unit of measurement who did. Whereas my existent parents’ mail-order shopping was express to the occasional windbreaker from Lands’ End, my imaginary Hammacher mom in addition to dad purchased hovercraft, personal submarines, in addition to giant floating trampolines amongst abandon. They knew how to party.

Between 1983 in addition to 2005, in that location was a Hammacher Schlemmer store at the human foot of Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue. I recollect gawking outside, thinking that the stones in addition to bricks embedded inwards the building’s façade—Colonel McCormick’s prized samples from the Great Pyramid, Notre Dame Cathedral, in addition to beyond—were only utilization of the store’s inventory. After all, if anyone were going to sell a department of the Parthenon, it would live Hammacher Schlemmer.

The store shuttered its doors, but the society is even hence around, headquartered inwards the northwest suburbs. And it continues to release its signature catalog, every bit it has for the by 137 years. Hammacher Schlemmer mails out fifty 1000000 of them a year, inwards fact. It’s the longest-running catalog inwards American history.

These mail-order catalogs of bizarre gadgets, esoteric tchotchkes, in addition to peculiar health treatments adhere to the same format in addition to fashion every bit the ones delivered to my family’s storey to a greater extent than than twenty years ago. With few exceptions, the iv items per page are pose out inwards a quadrant, each amongst a photo, a dense block of explanatory text, and, most famously, a descriptive title. Open the 2018 jump catalog supplement in addition to you’ll honor the Genuine Handmade Irish Gaelic Shillelagh, the 911 Instant Speakerphone, the Clarity Enhancing Sunglasses, in addition to the Closet Organizing Trouser Rack all on 1 page.

In the historic menstruation of Amazon, few things stand upward for an ethos to a greater extent than diametrically opposed to the “everything store” than the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. Typing “socks” into Amazon’s search bar yields a seemingly interplanetary space issue of options. But the Hammacher Schlemmer jump catalog supplement offers solely the Best Circulation Enhancing Travel Socks in addition to the Plantar Fasciitis Foot Sleeves, 45 pages apart. There are no algorithmically predicted production placements or targeted suggestions.

The mere beingness of Hammacher Schlemmer these days invites around fair, yet pointed, questions. Who’s buying this stuff? at 1 time pops to mind. As does: How has the society lasted this long? And: What variety of soul sees the Wearable Mosquito Net in addition to thinks, I must accept this?

For much of its history, Hammacher Schlemmer was a distinctly New York brand. It even hence maintains its solely physical store on East 57th Street inwards Manhattan, but the headquarters accept been inwards the Chicago expanse since merchandiser in addition to collectible-plate magnate J. Roderick MacArthur (of the MacArthur “genius” grant family) bought the society in addition to relocated it inwards 1981. As the dwelling of catalog pioneers Montgomery Ward in addition to Sears, Roebuck, Chicago was a natural gibe for the nation’s most august purveyor of the mail-order medium....

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