I’m a history buff. The Sears Roebuck and Co. catalog from 1900 looks a little like a cartoon today, but it holds an important lesson for distribution in 2012. On the cover is a picture of a globe, a cornucopia horn with products spilling out, a banner proclaiming to be the “cheapest supply house on earth,” and two sentences with a very important message that goes like this:

THIS BOOK… tells just what your storekeeper at home pays for everything he buys and will prevent him from overcharging you on anything you buy from him.

I thought about that Sears catalog as I mulled over the impact of Amazon’s launch …