Sarah Ashdown argues Argos should bring back its printed catalogue

Sarah Ashdown, consumer marketing and revenue director at Manifesto Growth Architects, argues that Argos should revive its printed catalogue as it prepares for new owners, saying it could help the retailer rediscover how to make people want things.

Comedian Bill Bailey once called the catalogue “the laminated book of dreams”, and Alan Carr picked it as his book on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. In July 2020, Argos said it would stop printing the catalogue regularly by January 2021.

Sainsbury’s has now agreed to sell Argos to Swift Partners. The deal is expected to bring in at least £120m in cash proceeds and to complete in February 2027. Sainsbury’s bought Argos in 2016 as part of its approximately £1.4bn acquisition of Home Retail Group.

Swift’s executives have raised the prospect of opening new standalone stores and bringing back the printed catalogue, which Ashdown sees as a glimmer of hope for its return.

She compares it to the Ikea catalogue, whose circulation peaked at 200m copies in 2016, describing both as places where desire was created.

Inspiration now tends to happen on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest, she says, with shoppers arriving at a retailer’s site already primed to buy. When the catalogue went, Argos lost a strong way of reaching people before they had a specific purchase in mind.

Argos has tried to recreate that experience with its ‘Your Catalogue’ app feature, offering curated products and recommendations as well as shopping inspiration. “But for me, it still cannot replicate the pleasure of flicking through the physical catalogue,” Ashdown writes.

Desire versus convenience

Ashdown asks whether a comeback for the catalogue could point to a revival of retail fantasy, and the return of some of the daydreaming and browsing squeezed out by ecommerce.

“Retail has become adept at converting intent, but arguably less good at creating it. Historically, Argos did both,” she writes.

She says the business was traditionally built on desire and knew exactly what its customers wanted. In practical terms the catalogue was a book of products, but emotionally it was full of hopes and aspirations, letting people long for anything from jewellery to lawn mowers.

Under Sainsbury’s, Ashdown argues, the balance moved from desire to convenience. Argos became better at meeting immediate needs but lost much of its magic, focusing more on functional purchases such as picking up printer cartridges during the weekly food shop.

The question, she says, is how a retailer keeps the magic that drives intent while adapting to changing customer expectations.

She warns that some businesses risk prioritising short-term wins over long-term customer relationships. Customer-centricity is often equated with speed, ease and convenience, she says, but that only holds if convenience is what the customer actually wants. A grocery shop should be frictionless, while choosing a bike or doing the Christmas shopping are entirely different missions.

Built on anticipation

“The most customer-centric experiences aren’t always the fastest; they’re the ones designed around the customer’s underlying need,” she writes, describing Argos as a model built on anticipation.

She acknowledges the store experience was frustrating. City centre stores were awkward for big-ticket purchases, since shoppers could not carry a bench back to a pay-and-display car park, and before Sainsbury’s took over the in-store experience was a little lacklustre. The brand still prevailed, and Sainsbury’s purchase of Home Retail Group in 2016 showed how much it valued Argos.

In Ashdown’s view, Sainsbury’s ownership improved convenience but did little to restore the joy of browsing. It is easy for an acquirer to optimise a business around its own operating model and its own idea of good customer experience, she says, when what is needed is an understanding of why customers value it. The danger is that the things customers liked get optimised away by accident.

She accepts that Sainsbury’s alone did not change Argos’s fortunes, as the market had already moved, but questions whether fitting Argos into a convenience-led model diluted its original role as a place for inspiration and discovery.

Argos now needs to re-establish its relevance with customers who grew up with Argos and relearn how to create demand for sustainable growth, she argues. If a revived catalogue achieves that, “then so be it”, but it should be only the starting point, with the desirability it generates carried into other parts of the business.

She suggests a seasonal printed catalogue could sit alongside digital wishlists and discovery features, so shoppers have a reason to browse before they have settled on a purchase. The proposed sale, she says, is a chance to double down on what made Argos so popular.