Say you were in the 1920s or 1970s. If you wanted to find a store to buy music or just any store that catered to a specific niche, how would you have gone about finding out what your options were?
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You’d look it up in a business directory, like the [Yellow Pages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pages).
Those have been around since the late 1800s.
[This Yellow Pages advert](https://youtu.be/r2TilNclT8k) is still pretty well remembered in the UK.
Ads in newspapers, especially free local ones. Used to be essential for finding shows and movie times.
In addition to things like the Yellow Pages, there was a ton of word of mouth and people sharing information in hobby groups, etc. “Dude! Mike said that Vinyl-O-Rama is getting the new Maiden album next week!”
Check the yellow pages and call them all to ask if they have what you are looking for.
Or go to specialised events or trade shows where there are several distributors present.
Every niche hobby had a monthly or weekly magazine which had very detailed ads and price lists. You could spec a full PC build from all the major suppliers and order based on one weekly copy of a computer magazine. Or you’d see their ad and phone them up to get a catalogue sent.
Before the internet, most households were given 2 telephone directories by the local Telephone Company; The White Pages and The Yellow Pages. (Some smaller towns would have these Pages in a single ‘flippable’ tome).
The White Pages was an opt-out directory of personal (ie: residences, rather than businesses) telephone numbers and addresses, sorted by last name.
The Yellow pages was (is?) a list of businesses ordered by category. If you wanted to find a Music Store, you’d check the index for the page of Music Stores, turn to the page, and then you’d see small and large listings for music stores in your city.
[Here’s](https://i.redd.it/h6iokuc0jf301.jpg) an example of what a page of Water Pumps would look like. You’d pay more for a larger, more eye-catching, listing.
There was and is also the option of calling your local TelCo for Directory Assistance, who could connect you to people and places in other cities.
If you wanted something very niche, and/or you lived too far from a city big enough to have the kind of stores you wanted, there was always mail order catalogs.
For example I was into cycling and camping. I subscribed to Bicycling magazine, and Outside magazine. Each would always have ads offering free product catalogs with names like Bike Nashbar or Gander Mountain. Tear out the card, fill in your name and address and now you’re on the catalog mailing list. Every few months a cool new catalog would show up in the mail — many were actually really interesting, with mini little product reviews, photos and stories from super avid customers, etc.
Great, now I miss getting those catalogs 😛 Sure, Amazon.com lets you view products in your room using AR, but it’s just not the same as a really fun catalog like Nashbar was.
Oy! I just checked their site — it’s a model of modern efficiency. Nothing like the fun casual reading experience the paper catalogs were. In fact, getting free catalogs in the mail was a fine way to stay up on hobbies and interests if you weren’t quite in a position to spend money subscribing to a monthly magazine.
The first place to look was a business directory. These were usually called yellow pages and were a kind of phone book but instead of sorting people by name it sorted businesses by category. So you could look up the music store category and get a list of all music stores.
But a lot of times you would have to ask the staff at a store, even if it was not the right store. The staff was expected to know a lot more about their field then they are today. If you went into a music store and asked for a particular genera or a specific band that they did not have in that store they could tell you which other nearby music store would have that in stock. The advantage to the store was that you typically went to them first for any question which would gain them sales.
You also had a lot of catalogs. Stores would get catalogs from distributors sent to them all the time so they could pick which wares to carry and not. These catalogs were kept in the store so that if a customer wanted they could look through this catalog and order things from it through the store. So if you came to a music store and asked for a niche genera that they did not carry they would show up with a few catalog from different record companies and show you the pages they had on this genera. You could then pick out a few albums and the store would have those in stock in a few days.
There were also a lot more magazines available before the Internet. If you were interested in something you would probably subscribe to the magazine for that topic. And the magazine would have a lot of advertisements, many were not that different from the catalogs the companies would issue. They would even print order forms as part of the advertisement that you could send inn and have it shipped to you.
Every imaginable hobby had a raft of magazines and any decently sized town would have a main-branch WH Smiths (or similar massive chain newsagent, but probably a Smiths) that would carry a bewildering array of them. There would be adverts in these magazine.
Three main sources – you’d talk to people with the same interests, you’d read specialized newspapers/magazines and you’d talk to staff at the niche stores you visited.
Not as time effective as searching the internet, but I miss it.
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