One of our long-time sources for discount baby gear, Connecticut-based BabyCatalog.com is calling it quits as its owner retires. The site has launched a retirement sale and is liquidating all its remaining inventory—including such brand names as Bugaboo, Perego, Britax and more.

Owner Joe Randazzo started Baby Club of America back in 1992—yes, those pre-Internet days you read about in old textbooks. The concept: sell brand-name baby products at a discount via a membership club program. Initially, this was done via a mail order catalog. In fact, the company’s first web site, launched in 1995 as BabyCatalog.com, was simply a listing of the what was in the catalog. If you wanted to order, you had to pick up the phone.

BabyCatalog.com caught baby gear manufacturers by surprise—suddenly, they were inundated with calls from baby retailers, complaining about the discount prices for gear they could see online. “The suppliers tried to convince the retailers that the internet was  just a ‘passing fancy’ and that it (and I) would go away very soon, probably within months” said Randazzo in an email to us, discussing the company’s closing. “You know the rest of the story.”

We found it amazing that BabyCatalog.com was able to hang in for 20 years, despite the eventual competition from Amazon, Diapers.com, BabiesRUs.com and more. While the company never had the slickest web site, it continued to offer good customer service and decent prices—we rarely if ever got a complaint about the company from readers.

Randazzo said he is liquidating stock “at prices you won’t see anywhere else or ever again. It’s our way of saying thanks for the journey.”

So a tip of the hat to Randazzo and the entire crew at BabyCatalog.com—a pioneer in the online selling of baby gear.