Past

Kawartha Marketing is an international organization established in the spring of 1989. The company’s original offerings included information products sent via mail order as well as marketing services for other established firms. It soon became apparent that there was a market for more specialized goods that were of particular interest to the company’s founder, Paul Snider.

A  store was opened specializing in collectable military items and firearms. The store soon became crowded with collectable militaria from around the world, and had to be converted into a warehouse. Kawartha Marketing was once again active in mail order sales and local customers could visit the warehouse by appointment only.

Kawartha Marketing began advertising military collectables in upscale collector publications and it’s mail order business grew exponentially. The original target market was actually American collectors, but word soon spread among the militaria collector community and Kawartha Marketing was utilizing many of it’s resources just keeping up with the demand for this unique product niche.

At this point it was decided that the company would close it’s warehouse doors completely to the public and instead concentrate on the international mail order sales that made up the bulk of it’s business. It should be noted that the company achieved these goals by conventional mail order, as the Internet had not yet been opened to the public.

When the Internet was first made available to the public Kawartha Marketing was one of the first local businesses to establish a presence on the World Wide Web. Back then there were not a lot of people who knew how to put together websites, so Paul Snider taught himself and started coding websites by hand. He was also instrumental in helping other local businesses establish their own presence on the Internet.