The high street isn't going anywhere just yet, nor is the ability to return a mail order item if you just don't like it.
Mail-order items from these companies were sampled by Marian Burros.
What it is: A coolly overwrought compendium of highly designed objects and accessories intended as mail-order items of the W Hotel Store, a coolly overwrought emporium in Times Square's W. Philosophy: A "collection of the most Wonderful, Worldly and Wanted Items".
Their first video, Where's God When I'm S-Scared?, was a $13 mail-order item.
Of that, $4.1 million came from for-profit businesses: the inn and restaurant ($2.4 million); cheddar sales ($900,000, most of it mail order); gift shop items ($570,000); and special events like weddings and a Mozart festival ($240,000).
There's a box scheme with free delivery to the surrounding area and mail order for non-perishable items.
Last year, she embraced online commerce, and Moresca's Web site (www.moresca.com), which offers more than 100 Dundesigned items for mail order, is now her consuming passion.
This also applies to items bought from mail order firms, over the phone, or through your TV.
Among the most successful items to buy mail order are bare-root trees, roses and perennials, which as the name suggests arrive without a pot and the roots bare of soil.
While chef-owner Debra Ponzek's Aux Delices in Riverside is mainly a gourmet take-out shop of the highest order, certain of the shop's most popular items, those most easily shipped, are available for mail order delivery.
Do not even attempt to flip through mail order catalogs and risk spending just a small amount on an item.
