Twenty years ago it would have nothing but incredible to not hold in your hand items costing a month’s wage before buying them and waiting two days for them to appear on your doorstep.
This first catalogue was a single sheet of paper with a price list, 8 by 12 inches, showing the merchandise for sale and ordering instructions. Montgomery Ward identified a market of merchant-wary farmers in the Midwest. Within two decades, his single-page list of products grew into a 540-page illustrated book selling over 20,000 items. From about 1921 to 1931, Ward sold prefabricated kit houses, called Wardway Homes, by mail order.[4]
Unless of course you were putting your emphasis on 2-day mailing. I suspect Ward couldn’t sell you a new house and deliver it in 2 days.
Er… mail-order is old. Very old. Like, ordinary farmers in the Midwest would easily send off to Montgomery Ward orders for hugely expensive things like farming equipment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#Ward:_mail_order_pioneer :
Unless of course you were putting your emphasis on 2-day mailing. I suspect Ward couldn’t sell you a new house and deliver it in 2 days.