In fact, _two_years_ ago. For a U.S.-based company in the same line of business as Lee Valley, as it happens.
A 'sale catalog', by definition, is not a large catalog. The production process is much different for a sale catalog. You get that ability to set pricing much closer to mailing date at a significantly higher production cost.
Funny thing, too. you can get much faster turn-around on a large number of copies of a relatively small number of pages, than on a relatively small number of copies of a large number of pages.
There is also the issue of the _number_ of people you're willing to throw at the task. Which has to be amortized over the number of copies produced.
And whether the catalog production is the _only_ thing they do, or whether they have to do 'something else' _most_ of the time.
A *BIG* company, like Sears, or Eatons, has a large advantage in all those areas; a *much* bigger base -- at least two orders of magnitude -- to amortize costs across, *Dedicated* departments/staff doing the work. and and producing _many_ publications per year.
They spend considerably more on advertising, per dollar of revenue/profit, and which is reflected in the amount of 'mark-up' they have to take. On the other hand, because of the 'economies of scale', they get *more* 'value' per dollar spent on catalog production.