Check cashing…maybe. But then you’re only talking 14 days tops. What is “processing” anyway?
“We were just f*cking assholes back then” is the only legitimate answer I can think of. I ordered a strobe light from Montgomery Ward in 1976 and it took 90 days to be shipped. WT mother F!?!
Never mind the logistics of actually delivering something!
Used to be, if you simply wanted to report a change of address to your bank, or magazine subscription, the standard word was “allow six to eight weeks”. Today, it (usually) happens more or less instantly.
Payment processing is more or less instant now with debit cards.
Checks took a long time to clear and credit card processing was in it’s infancy in the 70s and took forever. Money orders were quick but you still had to mail it. I would surmise most business is done online rather than by mail (still a good portion by phone though) speeding up things quite a bit.
It’s a theory but I would imagine the sheer bulk of things that we now order online/not at a store now as opposed to 40-50 years ago has increased so much, the infastructure has grown along with it. More mail trucks, more warehouses, more everything to keep up with the demand. Every thing is faster. We live in a different kind of world and we like to primarily get our things in a different kind of way and we’ve built things in a way to support that as opposed to a time were most people went downtown/shopping mall to shop for most of their goods.
I think both of them stepped up their game after FedEx started and showed how it could be done.
Even back then they wanted to minimize costs of sending this stuff to kids. Remember, the goal of getting them to buy the product had already been achieved.
I had a summer job in 1971 working in a jewelry warehouse (very small) fulfilling orders for retailers. This was done by three or four of us climbing around on shelves pulling out small packets of stuff based on a sheet of paper. It didn’t take long, but if there was ever a whole bunch of orders it could have backed up tremendously, and if we had to deal with big stuff in a big warehouse it would have taken a lot longer.
There was no attempt at optimizing anything. I wonder if large warehouses, that ran on paper, did much better.
In the mid-80s I know a mathematician who worked on algorithms for optimizing fiber optic cable production and shipping. This was Bell Labs stuff back then - today I bet anyone can get a PC program to do the same.
I honestly dunno. But figure 3 days for the letter to reach the destination, 2 days for in-house processing and 5 days for delivery. That’s 10 business days = 2 weeks. Best case scenario, really.
I’m guessing the 90 day pace occurred when they ran out of stock. Today we have something called just-in-time inventory: Toyota and Walmart were 2 innovators in this regard. (IRRC that Walmart issues electronic reports of their sales to their suppliers multiple times per day, broken down by store. Source: Economist magazine article I once read.) Like I said, the supply chains are simply run more efficiently, resulting in smaller warehouses and shorter delays.
Anyway, my point is that you’re addressing one of the most innovative sectors in the economy over the past 30 years. Advances will surely be slower over the next 30 years. I mean Amazon can ship stuff overnight now: I assume within-day delivery will be achieved, but they presumably won’t be able deliver today’s order yesterday or 90 days ago.
The next advancement will be simply ordering off Amazon and printing it using the3D printer (that will be as common as TVs are now) instantly. No wait.
You’ll see…you’ll see.
Family Guy or something like it had a bit where a kid ordered Grit from the back of a comic book, and it showed the editors in a building somewhere receiving his order and freaking out – “Now we’re going to have publish a newspaper!”
You’re underestimating the way companies look at these costs.
First, companies are looking at opportunity cost. If a company can invest money to earn 10% interest (possible in the 70’s at least), then the cost of having inventory just sitting around starts at 10% a year. Even if they can put off the order just one more month, they’ve made more interest. (As a modern example of this: around 2005, I analyzed Dell and Apple for their inventory cycle and they don’t pay their vendors until three months after you’ve paid them. This amounted to tens of millions of dollars in savings from an opportunity cost standpoint.)
Second, warehousing is more expensive than you may think. Buildings, power, taxes, insurance, employees. Then there’s theft and spoilage. Things sitting around on shelves get dusty and faded, even cheap toys. It adds up.