Cancelled: The Book Of Dreams, Argos Stop Production For Their Iconic Catalogue

Ask any kid growing up in the UK in the 1980s to talk about childhood memories and it won’t be long before they mention creating a Birthday or Christmas wish list from the Argos catalogues lovingly refereed to as ‘The Book of Dreams’. 

Or the tiny little Argos pens that you used in store to write down your order number for the cashier.

But after 48 years, and 1 billion copies produced, the retailer has highlighted they are ceasing production.

Suppliers knew that placement on the Argos catalogue pages were golden, especially a right hand facing spot – and the bigger the feature, the higher the premium for your brand being part of the coveted commercial book.

It may seem strange for younger generations with a Smartphone in hand 24/7 to understand why something so cumbersome was an important addition to home across the UK.

But just like the Yellow Pages phone book, it allowed an albeit antiquated search facility to get information you needed, all in one place. 

More than just selling the products, the catalogues served an important function for those needing an “wotzit’ for the television unsure on where to get it.

It combined many categories for product for sale in one place, with clear pricing and convenient service.

With the rapid retail evolution and growth of online, is cleat why the printed catalogue of which millions were printed each year, is not part of the plans beyond 2020. But we should appreciate the part is has played in the evolution of retail over the years.

Argos brought a very different style of retailing to the UK, established in the 1970s, it was the brainchild of Green Shield Stamps creator, Richard Tompkins.

 It’s famous Elizabeth Duke jewelery brand was the 4^thbiggest in the UK and in the 80’s and 90’s Argos was a retail powerhouse both in the High Street and in peoples home. As most retailers were closed by 5.30pm, Argos was a firm fixture on the coffee table’s in households across the UK, it appealed across the demographics – and was ‘selling’ to the customer beyond the store, and beyond the official trading hours.

After peaking over a decade ago, the brand has felt the hit from the new generation of retailer pioneers – particularly Amazon, who didn’t have 840 bricks & mortar stores and their associated costs to run.

Just as Blockbusters could have seen the same potential as Netflix and reoriented sooner, it strikes that Argos could have made greater moves to evolve from that store network sooner.

Argos parent brand, Home Retail Group was taken over by supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s in 2016, and since has seen a lot of it’s store network evolved into a much smaller footprint within the supermarket’s stores.

With the store announcing the end of the catalogue, digital screens are used to engage with customers in store, as well as the online offer.

And whilst all of this is part of the carousel of progress, screen only serves a very different engagement from customers. 

A new generation of children will never know the joy of flicking through the catalogue not really knowing what you want, but having all the choices right in front of you, before carefully copying the product & Argos page number onto your present wish list. Just in case, you know, Santa needed a bit more help finding which toy you meant