Have a Bone to Pick? Just Call Anatomical Chart Co. in Skokie : Health care: The mail-order firm expects sales of its human skeletons, plastic body parts and charts to grow 30% this year.
Here resides one of the enduring pieces of evidence that the catalogue business can sell almost anything.
Housed in a simple, red brick building, Anatomical Chart Co. has built a multimillion-dollar catalogue trade catering to doctors, lawyers and educators as well as to movie prop departments in need of human bones--genuine and otherwise.
“They want an arm and a leg,” said sales representative Myrna Cohen with a smile after finishing a call with a customer.
More than a million potential customers have received the company’s spring/summer anatomical products catalogue that boasts on the cover “The World’s Only Source of Real Bone Skeletons and Skulls.”
“We used to be able to buy (a skeleton) for $200 to $300 and sell it for $400,” said Julia Stock, vice president of sales. Today, however, a museum-quality, natural bone, adult human skeleton--equipped with its own tripod and zippered dust cover--will set a customer back $1,995.
There are no restrictions on who can buy human bones. Most customers are medical schools or doctors who require the real thing. Many specialists believe that studying genuine human anatomy is the most valuable thing a student can do to learn to recognize the effects of disease and malformations of the body.
Real human specimens used to be easy to come by through sources in India until its government banned all exportation of human remains five years ago. “There were rumors of killing people for their bones,” said Marshall Cordell, president of Anatomical Chart, although he contends that the ban was a moral decision more than a response to such crimes.
The company claims to have two new sources for human remains. When the Oral Roberts medical school closed its doors in May, Cordell bought all of its human bones. The other source is secret. Stock insists that it’s all legal, but her lips are sealed about the cache to keep the company’s monopoly on the genuine bone market.
For most customers, anatomically correct plastic replicas of virtually everything from “The World’s Best Life-Size Plastic Human Skeleton” (slashed from $379.95 to $299.95) to the “Bisexual Muscular Model with Internal Organs,” complete with lifelike vessels, nerves and internal organs, do just fine.
Throughout the 25,000-square-foot warehouse, the shelves bulge with artificial femurs, orbiting eyes and human brains that can be disassembled. Lifelike arms and legs dangle from the ceiling.
There are also “key rings” from which dangle miniature body parts from head to toe and most everything in between. These are particular favorites among doctors, Stock said. Chiropractors buy miniature spines to use as promotional items, and dentists stock up on the $2.50 unbreakable elephantine molars.
“Most of this is really serious,” said Cordell, who passes out business cards attached to key rings that sport a small plastic heart.
Cohen said doctors are spending more than ever on models because patients are more interested in their bodies. “They want to see exactly what the problem is.”
Attorneys, particularly personal-injury lawyers, are also increasingly turning to the company for visual aids to use in court. And parents are buying “Anatoflash Cards” and body puzzles for their children.
But the heart of the business is its charts. Beginning in the 1940s, Peter Bachin drew five incredibly detailed anatomical pictures and peddled them to doctors and educators. Cordell, who picked up extra cash filling orders for the company while he was in college, eventually bought the rights to the charts.
Cordell has led the company through an expansion that has made it the self-described largest distributor of health-related educational materials in the country. The privately held company is projecting 30% growth and is expecting to reach $9 million in sales this year.
Armed with the marketing numbers that show an increase in sales around the gift-giving holidays and a surge in model skeleton rentals during the Halloween season, Cordell is eyeing high-traffic areas for retail outlets.
