To learn what is hot, catalogs are studied and gift shows visited.
Of late, the grande dame of catalogs, who is more accustomed to micromanaging than sitting back, has mainly been watching changes as they take place around her. Once-hot catalog items, like the Chinese needlepoint pillows on her sofa and the picture frames on the walls, still occupy prime real estate in the founder's office.
The Hot Book catalog, for women, has a section set at Rockefeller Center in New York City that imagines a day in the life of a network executive — "a very glamorized version," Mr. Farish joked.
This collection makes the Hot Fives and Sevens catalog -- most of which has always been available separately -- unified and thoroughly manageable as a start-to-finish listening experience.
We obtained furan (CAS no. 110-00-9, ≥ 99% pure) from Sigma-Aldrich (Munich, Germany), NovaTaq Hot Start DNA Polymerase (catalog no. 71091) from Merck (Darmstadt, Germany), and all other chemicals and enzymes from New England Biolabs (Ipswich, MA, USA) or Sigma-Aldrich, if not mentioned otherwise.
How else would I know that Central Restaurant Products catalog sells a hot-fudge/cheese warmer (with spout pumps) for $255?
Despite a voluminous reading list that runs from Plato to Beckett and includes Dante, Shakespeare, Kant, Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Ibsen, the seminar became one of the hottest offerings in the slender catalog of freshmen seminars; more than 100 students applied for 15 seats.
But now the fictional president calls him into action for reasons that are a catalog of real-life hot-button fears.
SELLING WHILE THE ARTIST IS HOT When the big November auction catalogs begin arriving in the mail next month, they will include the usual array of art being sold by museums.
It's also a hot item in the L.L. Bean holiday catalog, which vexes Morrill R. Worcester, a competitor who sells tabletop trees through his company, Worcester Wreath, in Harrington, Me.
JiWire, which maintains a sprawling directory of public wi-fi hot spots worldwide, is considering expanding its catalog to include newer wireless technologies, such as WiMax, says David Staas, the company's senior vice president of marketing.
