Mail Order Business is Exploding, and Home Based Business is Booming

June 20, 2005 -- Mail order, now commonly referred to as direct marketing, is a trillion-dollar business. Mail order businesses earned approximately $2.3 trillion in 2004, with more than $143 billion in catalog sales alone, according to the latest Direct Marketing Association (DMA) report. The report also predicts a healthy annual growth rate of 8.5% for direct marketing through 2007.

At the same time, according to a study prepared for the Small Business Administration (SBA), 53 percent of small business in the U.S. are “home based” businesses. The number of new home businesses is on the rise; according to U.S. Census Bureau report, the number of businesses with one or more owners but no paid employees grew nationwide from 17 million in 2001 to more than 17.6 million in 2002, a growth rate of 3.9 percent.

“Mail order is a fantastic way to start a business from home,” says John Schulte, president of the National Mail Order Association (NMOA), publisher of the new Direct Marketing Toolkit. “Some of the greatest companies in America are mail order companies that have been started by entrepreneurs at home. And with the advent of the Internet, mail order has been launched into the twenty-first century.

“Mail order is the last frontier for the entrepreneur…who, with little more than a burning desire and something to sell, can work hard, build up a good-sized business and perhaps get rich. And what most people don’t understand, is that when you’re in a home-based business, all your marketing efforts are really direct marketing and mail order based.”

The Direct Marketing Toolkit is a comprehensive resource for entrepreneurs who want to start a business from home, or already have a small business and need to learn the time-proven techniques to expand.

This 100-page guide contains 20 chapters that cover every aspect of starting and building a business using direct marketing and mail order methods. The kit also includes a companion CD-ROM with sample advertisements, worksheets and promotional templates, and includes Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheets for direct mail breakeven analysis and the first two years of profit and loss operation.

Readers of the Direct Marketing Toolkit will discover easy-to-understand instructions for avoiding scams, picking a company name, determining what to sell, learning rules and regulations, finding wholesale sources, developing new product concepts, selling on the web, as well as through catalogs, direct mail, magazine ads, and on TV using infomercials.

The guide, introductory priced at $59.95, is available for purchase online at: http://www.nmoa.org/DirectMarketingToolkit.

About The National Mail Order Association (NMOA)
Headquartered in Minneapolis, the NMOA (www.nmoa.org) is a membership-supported organization founded in 1972 to help small to midsize businesses and entrepreneurs involved in mail order and direct marketing. The NMOA provides education, information, and business contacts worldwide.