Ken Ebeling

Online spending may be increasing, but the venerable catalog is doing anything but fading away. In fact, it's still an important part of business for retailers. “It’s basically a marketing tool,” said retail analyst Eric Beder, a managing director at Brean Murray, Carret & Co. “The beauty of a catalog is that you don’t have to go online to see it, so you can use it anywhere.” More than 12.5 billion catalogs were mailed out to homes in the U.S. last year, according to the Direct Marketing Association, the largest global association for the marketing community.