Who (k)new?

Here at Catalogue e-business we receive dozens of catalogues every week. So when a new catalogue crosses our path of course we like to investigate and find out more about the company, its owners, their backgrounds, and the role the catalogue plays in the overall marketing mix.
A couple of weeks ago we received a catalogue that we’d never seen before--it will rename nameless for the purposes of this blog. The director’s letter on the inside front cover read: “…we have built a loyal following and are now delighted to launch a catalogue to complement our website.” All well and good, we thought. It might make an interesting story for the magazine, something along the lines of why it waited so long to move into print, and what finally persuaded it to mail a catalogue.
But upon contacting the company’s press officer I was told that the company’s catalogues “have been in print for a good few years now, so I’m afraid you must have seen an old one.” I don’t think so: The one on my desk is dated Spring/Summer 2009. When pressed further on the matter, the company told me it was “not interested in following through”.
I wasn’t going to run a Donal MacIntyre-type exposé on the business. This was a news piece on a catalogue launch. So why the secrecy? Is the catalogue new or not?—MT