• November 18, 2009

JCPenney may have built its century-old brand on massive catalogs, but the Plano, Texas-based retailer says the time has come to say goodbye: It will no longer publish its twice-yearly "big book" catalogs.

Instead, it says in a statement, it will devote those resources to a range of customized specialty catalogs, and focus on targeted growth initiatives for jcp.com and ongoing leading-edge digital media services. The result, it says, will be 25 to 30% reduction in paper used in 2010, continuing a four-year trend of declining paper consumption.

Specialty catalogs will have titles like "Rooms Babies Love," the cooks catalogs, and "Little Reed Book" offerings for women's apparel. The company says it will strive to reduce paper use even more by refining its lists, responding more promptly to requests to be removed from lists, switching to lower-weight paper, and when possible, incorporating 10% post-consumer waste into catalogs.--Sarah Mahoney