Here’s a trip down memory lane … our first Drysdales print catalog, published in late 1989.
The cover:
All of the illustrations were hand-drawn by an employee, and the first catalog was printed in black-and-white. Hand-drawn illustrations for print were common during that era.
Now, the images for all Drysdales catalogs are captured with high-end cameras and are printed in full color. If you want our next catalog mailed to you, go here to request one.
Drysdales employees served as clothing models for the drawings. Nowadays, Drysdales uses professional models.
A few more images from that first catalog:
The first catalog contained just 16 pages, with just 16,000 copies printed. Drysdales Vice President Sig Schwier said the mail-order catalog was created to meet the requests of faraway customers who couldn’t travel to Tulsa.
Nowadays, Drysdales catalogs typically contain more than 100 pages, with a print run in the hundreds of thousands of copies.
We’ll take a look at other catalogs in our archives in the future.
