Freestyle sends out their last printed catalogs

Wayne · Jul 25, 2015

I agree. I'd much rather have the hard copy than navigate a website. The notion that the manufacture and maintenance of the millions of of humming computers around the world necessary for the web to function are somehow greener than renewable resources is a baffling one indeed.

momus said:
I'm not too happy about this. Went to the mailbox just now and there was a Frestyle catalog in it. Great I thought. But then I saw what it says on the front cover.... "Save This Issue". They aren't going to be making any more catalogs. Just the online stuff. I'm sorry, but that is not the same thing.

DWThomas · Jul 26, 2015

I wasn't aware Freestyle did a paper catalog, as I have always bought from them online, which is my preference anyway. As someone said upthread, print catalogs are out of date by the time they arrive.

As one who was involved with control systems in some papermills years back, I can report that paper may be made from renewable resources, but paper making uses gobs of energy -- one mill I spent time in generated 50 MW of electrical power for its in-house operations, and that doesn't include massive amounts of boiler-supplied steam used for heating dryer drums and woodchip digesters and recycling chemicals. Some bark and knots were burned in the boilers, but mostly it was fossil fuel. There were also two rotary lime kilns the size of those jobbies you see in cement mills. And then there is the printing, binding, shipping and delivery of said catalogs, all in all, methinks not too "green." (And given the modest size of Freestyle, the server farms will mostly be there no matter how they handle their catalogs.)

Pioneer · Jul 26, 2015

I buy online but I usually know in advance what I am intending to buy.

I browse using their paper catalog which has alerted me to products that I was not aware were available.

I may or may not buy the item but at least I know it exists. I will never buy it if I don't know it is there.

Maybe they should consider distributing an annual catalog.

I think I'll have to go drop a comment on them.

EDIT - Feedback made direct to Freestyle.

MattKing · Jul 26, 2015

Or maybe they need a digital catalogue that is oriented toward browsing, paired with more of a nuts and bolts, prices and availability online shop.

hoffy · Jul 26, 2015

pschwart said:
Have you been receiving the Freestyle catalogue, or did you ask to be removed from their mailing list?

I was never on their mailing list. I have only ever bought from them once before and it was a right royal PITA. As I am not in the US, they required me to do a whole bunch of things before they would allow me to purchase through them, which really took away from the immediacy of buying on line.

I still seek them out when I am after something specific, but I hate to say it, its cheaper and easier to buy from the Big retailer in New York..... (who ironically send me a catalogue every year, which immediately goes into the recycling. I must find a way to stop them from doing that.)

Wayne · Jul 26, 2015

How much fossil energy and toxic waste is used and generated in the mining and manufacture and running and constant replacement of computers? I have a hard time believing it's any greener.

DWThomas said:
I wasn't aware Freestyle did a paper catalog, as I have always bought from them online, which is my preference anyway. As someone said upthread, print catalogs are out of date by the time they arrive.

As one who was involved with control systems in some papermills years back, I can report that paper may be made from renewable resources, but paper making uses gobs of energy -- one mill I spent time in generated 50 MW of electrical power for its in-house operations, and that doesn't include massive amounts of boiler-supplied steam used for heating dryer drums and woodchip digesters and recycling chemicals. Some bark and knots were burned in the boilers, but mostly it was fossil fuel. There were also two rotary lime kilns the size of those jobbies you see in cement mills. And then there is the printing, binding, shipping and delivery of said catalogs, all in all, methinks not too "green." (And given the modest size of Freestyle, the server farms will mostly be there no matter how they handle their catalogs.)

trythis · Jul 26, 2015

Wayne said:
How much fossil energy and toxic waste is used and generated in the mining and manufacture and running and constant replacement of computers? I have a hard time believing it's any greener.

You can do many things with one computer including access thousands of replaced catalogs (websites). Imagine how many catalogs it would take to create access to all the stuff we can look for online. Just the indexes for that many catalogs would fill a UPS truck top to bottom probably many times over.

You can only do one thing with a single purpose catalog and probably only do it a couple of times before throwing it away.

I had several 1000+ page Grainger catalogs and recycled them because the stuff gets discontinued, prices and model numbers change. They were useful in the 1990's and a little useful 10 yrs ago but they dont include every single thing anymore so you have to go online anyway. They can be handy when you are trying to quickly find complicated hardware but now the web coding is getting pretty damn good.

We just have to adapt, the demand for the old ways is running low and so must supplies.

Typos made on a tiny phone...

DWThomas · Jul 26, 2015

Wayne said:
How much fossil energy and toxic waste is used and generated in the mining and manufacture and running and constant replacement of computers? I have a hard time believing it's any greener.

Well, I am making the point that the choice is not as black&white as it seems. As one who gets a new computer about every eight years, and carries the same cell phone for four or five, I view the constant replacement of electronic gear as more of a keep up with the Joneses attitude than a necessity.

And it just hit me that added to my list above there is the forest management/lumbering and transport of trees to the papermills, a non-trivial energy consumption in itself. One of the mills I spent time at made upwards of 4000 TONs per DAY of paper product -- that translates to a lot of trees being trucked down the road. In my drive out of a mill one night I counted 22 trucks loaded with massive stacks of utility pole sized tree trunks in a one mile stretch (accompanied by the huge roar and fumes of diesel engines). White paper, as used for printed material, is bleached in a process that can generate dioxin and other nasties, not to mention the H2S coming off the wood chip digestion process which can often be smelled a half mile away. Thankfully such mills have tightened up a lot in the last few decades and are not as bad as they once were. I remember going past a mill in Maine circa 1970 on a vacation trip where traveling a river valley by the mill was like being teargassed.

BrianShaw · Jul 26, 2015

You should have been there in the 60's. Every Friday at noon the sulfur dioxide was purged into the open air.

BrianShaw · Jul 26, 2015

For a smaller company like Freestyle all of this macroeconomics might not be the issue. It may be more about the return on the investment of that particular advertising budget. Perhaps more people dreamed about the catalogue goods than actually bought. I'm one of them. It was fun but not very profitable for them. I buy about $100 per year so I don't blame them for cutting out some of their expenses.

DWThomas · Jul 26, 2015

BrianShaw said:
For a smaller company like Freestyle all of this macroeconomics might not be the issue. It may be more about the return on the investment of that particular advertising budget. Perhaps more people dreamed about the catalogue goods than actually bought. I'm one of them. It was fun but not very profitable for them. I buy about $100 per year so I don't blame them for cutting out some of their expenses.

That's an excellent point. I have in the past occasionally received a catalog from B&H that's printed on decent paper, and huge, and wondered about the economics. I have bought a fair amount of stuff from them, including some computer gear, but certainly well less than $1000 a year most years. I'm certainly not a purchaser of pro video gear and large LED lighting panels, etc. I've no idea (and it's probably a state secret!) what the per customer purchase numbers look like.

I do try to buy from Freestyle occasionally, as I'd like them to keep going -- and they ship the new 1L bottles of HC110! But living outside of Philadelphia, cheap UPS ground gets stuff to me from B&H in less than 48 hours which helps for someone as disorganized as my aging self!

jacaquarie · Jul 26, 2015

And something to think about, my impression is that Freestyle has not given up on paper catalogs but instead the paper catalog for film. Read page 3 of last catalog, "The new digital Freestyle Creative Imaging Supplies catalog is still available!"
Maybe the problem is we are not purchasing enough film products instead of digital products?

Aj

Sirius Glass · Jul 26, 2015

David A. Goldfarb said:
Threads merged.

Thank you

RalphLambrecht · Jul 28, 2015

trythis said:
If it makes film and chemical prices lower I am all for it.

Typos made on a tiny phone...

Don't worry It won't but the cheap cheap cheap attitude is what got us here.That's why you're left with online anything.Hope it makes you happy.That makes one at least

RalphLambrecht · Jul 28, 2015

David A. Goldfarb said:
I'd rather they save the printing and mailing costs. I order off the web anyway.

Why am I not surprised?:confused:

ChuckP · Jul 28, 2015

Printed catalogs do help preserve the history of old equipment. If you want to buy something 20 years old checking an old catalog can give you a lot of information. I doubt the current store website information will be available in 20 years. Or maybe my search skills are lacking and all websites are preserved and accessible for ever and ever including all history of changes. But I do like my old catalog collection and use it often.

trythis · Jul 28, 2015

I doubt that the companies that produce catalogs are considering posterity when dropping items from the expense category on the profit/loss sheet. I am sure that if the catalogs keep dollars high on the income column they would be keeping them. I am willing to guess that freestyle could not find enough paying customers to ship the minimum printing volume. This is a declining industry after all.

Typos made on a tiny phone...

AgX · Jul 28, 2015

Do any competitors/retailers of analogue photo-stuff still crank out printed catalogues?

Lachlan Young · Jul 28, 2015

jacaquarie said:
And something to think about, my impression is that Freestyle has not given up on paper catalogs but instead the paper catalog for film. Read page 3 of last catalog, "The new digital Freestyle Creative Imaging Supplies catalog is still available!"
Maybe the problem is we are not purchasing enough film products instead of digital products?

Aj

More likely, most of their film/ analogue business is done via the web & most of their digital market is of an older generation...

Over here, it's rare for a supplier to produce a catalogue these days unless they're targeting the educational market, which still seems to have an obsession with cheaply printed catalogues.

pschwart · Jul 28, 2015

It's too bad Freestyle never polled their customers about discontinuing the catalogue. I think an annual catalogue and/or a pdf version are a good middle ground. I might not have said anything if they discontinued *all* their paper catalogues, but continuing to mail just one for digital supplies sends customers the wrong message about their commitment to film photography.

Sal Santamaura · Jul 28, 2015

David A. Goldfarb said:
I'd rather they save the printing and mailing costs. I order off the web anyway.

RalphLambrecht said:
Why am I not surprised?:confused:

You shouldn't be surprised, that's why. David's statement is rational and reasonable. The kind of thing we're used to reading from him.

I was extremely pleased not too long ago when Freestyle stopped automatically putting one of its catalogs in every package delivered to me. They went straight into the recycle bin and, since had substantial associated weight, probably contributed to Freestyle's shipping charge increase a while back. Ending printed catalogs isn't a loss; it's a gain.

Sirius Glass · Jul 28, 2015

I will miss the short articles that FreeStyle wrote to highlight products or alternative processing options.

Roger Cole · Jul 28, 2015

I order everything I get from Freestyle online, but I still really like the catalog. Some stuff - particularly small and essential but durable darkroom items - seemed easier to find in the catalog by browsing than online, though the catalog did leave out a lot that was online. But the web site has at least improved in recent times.

Sigh. I just like print catalogs I can leave in the darkroom or, ah, "reading room" for casual browsing.

Sirius Glass · Jul 28, 2015

Roger Cole said:
Sigh. I just like print catalogs I can leave in the darkroom or, ah, "reading room" for casual browsing.

Catalogs do read better over porcelain.

Ozxplorer · Jul 29, 2015

G'day All! I guess the decision to develop the on-line catalogue might work well for them if they improve their customer communication process! Three times now I have written using their on-line contact page without response to any one of my enquiries. So far, in my opinion B&H are streets ahead in all respects of product range and service - although, at times appearing a little inflexible.

Freestyle sends out their last printed catalogs

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