If you’re a retailer and you have a catalog, you might want to check out Catalog Spree, a free iPad app that lets users quickly flip through all sorts of catalogs and even purchase items right there in the app. For small businesses there are no upfront costs to be included, rather the developer takes a negotiable revenue share of all sales through the app.

I tested the Catalog Spree from a consumer perspective and really liked it. While well-known retailers such as Coldwater Creek and Nordstrom are in Catalog Spree’s library, it also includes many I hadn’t heard of before such as seafood merchant Fresh & Wild, and Spy Museum Store, which sells comic strips from Mad Magazine.

Like other reader apps, this one lets you flip pages with a finger swipe. To buy something, or recommend it to others on Facebook, you just tap the image of the photo you’re looking at.

The app also has some good visual search capabilities. When you tap the deals tab it will bring up everything on sale for a particular vendor, and switching between stores is just another tap away. And if you’re looking for a particular item, such as “boots” it will bring up the pages that include them with the boots and their descriptions highlighted.

From a business perspective, it looks to me like an excellent marketing and branding tool. While I’m not sure how much of a cut the developer takes from sales, the process of partnering with the app looks pretty simple. Once a contract is in place, all you need to do is send them a catalog and provide them with a data feed.

For more information visit CatalogSpree.com ^[1].