Before the Sears catalog you instead had local monopolies by general store owners who could be absolute tyrants since there weren’t any cars. Getting what you need has always been difficult unless you literally live where it’s being made, which these days is Shenzhen or Guangzhou or somewhere like that.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth [0] is a fascinating book that talks about how much the Sears catalog revolutionized commerce in rural America.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/d...