No more Bloomie's catalog

Boy, talk about your sign of the times. The Bloomingdale's by-mail catalog is being discontinued next year in favor of a major push to online retailing on the Bloomingdales.com Web site. Might this be a harbinger of similar moves by other retailers? Well, Bloomingdale's CEO Michael Gould issued some gobbledygook comments in announcing the transition that would seem to point that way.

“As more customers turn to the Web for access to Bloomingdale’s, their shopping experience must be brand-right. We intend to implement various enhancements to the Web experience, including ones that can bring to life some of our celebrated special events. Eliminating the paper catalog is also consistent with our sustainability and environmental policies of communicating more with customers electronically and less in paper.”

Mail catalogs are, of course, a lot pricier to produce than simply placing items on the Web. And we could be approaching one of those techno-tipping points where consumers become just as comfortable using an online retail site as they are using a catalog. Even so, I wonder about the "flip factor" that would seem to eliminate a lot of impulse buying, at least for a certain generation of shoppers.