97-Year-Old Seed Catalogue Won’t Come Out in Spring

The Olds Seed catalogue, an early sign of spring for thousands of households, will be discontinued just three years shy of its 100th birthday because the firm says its mail-order business is no longer profitable.

“It just isn’t paying for itself anymore,” Ray Lang Jr., president of the Madison-based firm, said.

Lang said about 150,000 of the free catalogues have been mailed each year, and another 100,000 have been available at the firm’s three Madison garden centers.

The catalogue has been distributed since the company was founded at Clinton, Wis., in 1888.

“I had hoped the catalogue could make it to our 100th birthday,” Lang said.

The company’s mailing list has been sold to Jung Seed Co., which has been operating in Randolph, about 40 miles northwest of Madison, for about 79 years.

“Their catalogue business is much larger than ours, and they seemed to think it would be profitable to purchase our mailing list,” Lang said.