As a kid in high school, I loved reading through the catalogs that came in the mail. Biking catalogs were a favorite. Bike Nashbar and Performance Bicycle I remember. Campmor was another with all kinds of cool outdoorsy gear. But one of the most interesting that came in our mailbox was the Hidalgo Sunglasses catalog. It was printed on cheap newsprint, in black and white, but came loaded with interesting information about sunglasses, and prescription glasses as well. It had actual size pictures of the frames, so you could cut them out and try them on for size. Of course, back then I couldn’t afford anything in the catalog, but I learned a lot by reading it.
Since the dawn of the web, I’ve kept looking for Hidalgo on the web, but they were very late to the game. They did finally arrive, however, in more of a “Web 1.0” style than the “2.0” that was gaining traction. It still looks rather dated, but is full of good information and you can still actually download the entire old fashioned catalog as a PDF. According to the Wayback Machine, they first had a web site around 2001, but it was just a handful of static pages until 2010, when you could finally order from it!
I just visited again today, mostly to find the right URL to pass along to a friend, and discovered that Hidalgo is going out of business. Now I have to decide whether to buy a pair of sunglasses from them before they go out of business…