goods--meaning cloths and weaves of almost every sort--never used to be
found above the ground floor of any department-store. Retail
merchandising tradition in New York suffered a body blow some years ago
when Macy's sent them upstairs. Even the men who worked in the
department protested against the change. A sizable proportion of their
income was and is in their commissions upon their total volume of sales.
They could not see the sales upstairs.
"For two cents I'd resign," said one of the veterans, just as the change
was announced.
No one offered him the two cents, however, and he remained. And the
following year saw the department reach a new high level for total sales
in its yard goods.
One large reason for this in Macy's is the unusual accessibility of the
upper floors from the street level. It required little or no effort for
the customer to get to the second floor, or, for that matter, to the
sixth. The store's unusual and fairly marvelous system of escalators,
well-placed, smooth running, always available, and to be safely used by
even a rheumatic or a cripple, bring these self-same upper floors at all
times within easy reach of the street, and without the use of the firm's
generous plant of elevators. With the exception of the abnormal stress
and strain of the holiday season, the vertical system of Macy's
transportation is never very seriously taxed.
To those upper floors, also, go the folk whose purchases necessitate the
fitting of something or other to the human frame. As we have just seen,
shoes are upon the second floor. On the third is the women's wearing
apparel, with special dressing-room facilities for trying on and
fitting. Similar conveniences are to be found in the men's clothing
department upon the fifth floor.
Rugs, upholstery and art objects generally require more time for
selection than do shoes and socks, more room for display as well. They
go, then, quite naturally to the broad spaces of the fourth floor. The
same qualities, only somewhat emphasized, apply to furniture, which is
shown and sold upon the sixth. That the restaurant is relegated to the
eighth floor is due in large part to the necessity for having cooking
odors where they can be carried away without reaching other parts of the
store; as well as to considerations in regard to the economy of floor
space for an enterprise that is active during only a part of the day.
Minor changes in the arrangement of all these departments are constantly
and forever under way. A great market-place like Macy's never stays
entirely put. Special considerations, special problems, unforeseen
merchandising plans may at any moment make it not only advisable but
necessary to change the location or the relative space of any or all the
departments. At Christmas-time the unusual pressure upon some of them,
accompanied by a slacking in others--unfortunately (or fortunately?)
shoppers cannot be everywhere and at the same moment--means many
temporary changes--so one department must give some of its space for a
time to its neighbor--a debt possibly to be repaid at some other season
of the year, when thoughts are not on toys, or candies or jewelry, but
upon such serious things as carpets or refrigerators.
An interesting sidelight upon the intensive study that Macy's gives the
psychology of its interior arrangements is furnished in the fact that,
on the theory that the less deadly of the species has an inherent
aversion to department-stores, men's furnishing goods in these emporiums
should generally be displayed upon the main floor, and just as close to
a street entrance as is possible. Macy's has been no exception to this
rule. A man, even when he is in a mood for spending, wants it over with
as soon as possible. He is impatient of the slightest delay. On the
other hand, his wife or daughter will make of shopping a kind of ritual.
And, perhaps, because of that, she is often the more intelligent and
discriminating buyer.
Today, however, space on the main floor of the larger stores in New York
is proving so valuable for goods that appeal to women shoppers, that
some of them are trying to find a new method of appealing to the
man-in-a-hurry. And so there has come to be a distinct trend toward
putting men's goods upon a high upper floor, but with special express
elevator service, so that their purchasers can get in and out with a
minimum use of their valuable time.
That part of the organization of Macy's which always has, always has
had, and always will have the chief visual appeal to the public, is the
staff of sales people with whom it comes in constant contact. Again and
again, as we come to consider the minute workings of this great machine
of modern business, we shall find its human factor looming larger before
our very noses. We can not dodge it. We have no desire to dodge it. In
fact, we find it at all times the most fascinating feature of our study.
It is no part of this narrative to decide which part of the whole corps
of workers in the store is the most important to it--it would be similar
and quite as easy to try to give an opinion as to the relative
importance of the mainspring and the balance-wheel of a watch--but it is
enough to say here, as we shall say again and again, that the girl
behind the counter--to say nothing of the man--is an absolutely
indispensable feature. By her it rises; by her it might easily come
tumbling down.
Let me illustrate by the testimony of a young woman who recently was a
girl behind the counter at Macy's:
"It surely is true," she says, "that we salespeople can do a great deal
to increase the business and the number of customers. Some of these last
are, of course, nearly hopeless--they would try the patience of Job,
himself--and then again there are the others who are most appreciative
of your services. It was interesting to me, when first I went behind the
counter, to see how many of my customers would say 'thank you.' I found
that nearly all of them will, if only you make a real effort to please
them. And the majority of the Macy salesforce does try to help a
customer in any way that she needs help. One day I observed this
incident, which is almost typical: A customer approached our counter and
put her bag down upon it. A saleswoman went to her at once, saying:
"'May I help you, madam?'
"The customer shook her head, a negative; she was merely trying to
adjust her veil, she explained. But our saleswoman was resourceful in
her tact.
"'Well, maybe, I can assist you with that,' she insisted, and
straightway proceeded to do so. That was her notion of the service of
our store."
It is incidents just like this--seemingly small when you take them apart
and place them out by themselves--but in the aggregate very real and
very important, that make for a store its lifelong customers. Let the
young woman continue. Like a good many other young women in the store
she is a college graduate and also possessed of a power for shrewd
observation.
" ... One woman bought some gloves from me and while she waited for her
change showed me her shopping-list. It was miles long, seemingly, and
appeared to include everything from a safety-pin to a toy submarine. As
she conned it, she said that she had shopped in Macy's for years, and
nowhere else. In fact, I remember that she said that she would be
completely lost in any other store.... Others came back, bringing a
single glove that they had purchased a year or more before and wanting
another pair just like them, they had been so satisfactory....
"Not all of them are quite so cheery, however. Occasionally some
unreasonable and irate customer would appear, storming at having to wait
a few precious moments for her change, or at not being able to find the
same glove that her friend purchased the week before--the chances being
quite good that her friend might have bought the glove in another store.
These are the times that test the wit and diplomacy and resource of the
girl behind the counter.
"A day behind a counter is filled to the brim with experiences--you have
your finger on the pulse of a part of the life of New York--you are a
part of a huge and important organization, and you come into contact
with the world in general. Even customers coming to our glove counter
furnished us with interesting moments. One in particular came to me to
get some of our children's woolen gloves. He was a robust old man--about
fifty-five, I'd have said--but he told me he was sixty-nine. He said he
had just bought the same gloves elsewhere for over twice as much. (I
said I didn't doubt that in the least.) And then he went on to say his
wife and daughters shopped in stores where the name meant a great deal,
but that he always came to Macy's because he came for the merchandise he
got. He ended by saying he was a happy man, with three romping
grandchildren, that he daily handled over two thousand men, but couldn't
handle one woman. I should like to see him try to run Macy's and have to
handle some six thousand men and women."
The personnel of each of the selling floors of the store is under the
direction of an organization captain, whose precise title is floor
superintendent. He has an understudy--or, as he is known in the parlance
of the place, a relief--so that the floor is never, even for a minute,
without an executive head.
This floor superintendent is a man of considerable discretionary powers.
He must be. These powers are being constantly brought into play as he is
called upon to decide the merits of this or that customer's claim. He is
a man of tact and judgment, both of which qualities are kept in
constant operation. Upon his floor he is the direct representative of
the management and so looks out for its interests. From his desk upon
the floor headquarters he directs and supervises, yet he constantly
circulates throughout his various departments and sees to it himself
that the matters for which he is responsible are thoroughly carried out.
The orderliness of the floor is his special concern, and when, from time
to time, it becomes necessary to shift salesclerks from one department
to another--as in the case of the numberless special sales requiring
extra help--it is he who engineers the details of the transfer.
Acting as lieutenants to the floor superintendents are the section
managers, who, as we have already seen, were in the store of yesterday
known as "floorwalkers." But in the Macy's of today something
considerably different is meant from the superannuated and somewhat
pompous gentleman who used to condescend, when we asked for the location
of silverware, to wave us away with a cryptic
"second-aisle-to-the-right-rear-of-the-store." It now means a live,
up-to-date, agreeable gentleman, with a man's-size job to fill.
Not only must he ascertain the customers' needs and direct all of them,
plainly and courteously, but he has direct supervision over all of the
employees within his section. He is held responsible for their
deportment and it is his duty to observe, as far as possible, their
mental, moral and physical condition. He must be able to detect errors
in the methods used by his salesclerks, and in order that he may be in a
position to teach them correct methods, he must, himself, be master of
the store system. Parts of this constantly are being changed, so that in
addition to all of these other qualities, the successful section manager
must possess an alert mind. The importance of his work may be visualized
to some slight extent at least by the manual which is prepared for his
guidance. This is a loose-leaf book of some fifty closely printed pages;
the number varying according to the changes in the store system which
are made from time to time. Just to give you a slight idea of what this
captain of a merchandising army has upon his mind, consider that under
the division entitled "Section Managers' Daily Duties" there are
forty-six different items, and under "Miscellaneous Duties" thirteen.
Moreover, he must have at his instant command all the technical
procedure regarding transactions and forms, refunds, complaints,
transfers, employees' shopping, the Internal Revenue Law, accidents, and
then some more. I submit this as a job requiring all that a man has of
fortitude and delicacy!
Salesmanship is the thing that really made R. H. Macy & Company and it
therefore is patent that they should consider the actual sellers of
their goods as the very backbone of their organization. In another place
it is related how, in the department of training, employees are taught
to sell, and in another something of the working out of the psychology
of the customer and the salesclerk. Education counts. It helps to make
the salesclerk a vital factor of the store organization.
Macy policy sees to it that the clerk is, in so far as it is possible,
kept interested in his or her work. There are, as we have already begun
to understand, as few rules governing their conduct, dress and liberties
as are consistent with the smooth, economical operation of the business.
On the other hand, there is all possible encouragement for them to
become familiar and even expert with the things that they sell. In many
of the departments special booklets have been prepared as aids in
selling the particular line of merchandise carried. That for the
stationery department, for instance, covers: Paper, with its history
from the earliest times, its manufacture, sizes and characteristics;
engraving, with a full description of the processes connected therewith;
fountain-pens and their manufacture; desk accessories, commercial
stationery and the like. Ambition to excel in salesmanship is further
stimulated by taking clerks through factories where their lines are
made, and by exhibiting motion pictures of the manufacturing of these
goods.
Here, then, is the store's most direct contact with its patrons. There
are others, however, to be classed as at least fairly direct. Take that
big and comfortable restaurant up on the eighth floor. It is one of the
real landmark's among eating-places of New York, a world city of good
eating.
Its own magnitude may easily be guessed from the fact that in a single
business day it feeds more people than almost if not any other in the
town. Translated into cold figures this means that there is an average
of twenty-five hundred lunches bought by customers each day that the
store is open; with a maximum on extremely busy days reaching as high
as five thousand. Figures are impressive. Yet these do not include
either afternoon teas or late breakfasts for both of which there is a
considerable clientele.
To serve these hungry folk who come to Macy's there are two hundred
waitresses, buss-boys and other employees upon the floor, besides fifty
in the general kitchen, twenty in the bakery and eight in the ice cream
factory. And if you still try to doubt that this restaurant is not of
itself a real business and one to be reckoned with, consider that in the
course of an average year its patrons consume--among other things--two
thousand barrels of flour, fifty-two tons of sugar, seven hundred and
fifty thousand eggs, ninety-three thousand six hundred pounds of butter,
two thousand bags of potatoes, and nearly half a million quarts of ice
cream. This latter item, however, covers the ice cream used at the soda
fountain and in the employees' and men's club restaurants.
The employees' lunchroom--conducted on the cafeteria plan--serves four
thousand men and women each working day. It provides tasty and wholesome
food at a cost that makes it entirely possible to eat to repletion for
twenty cents or less. Soups, for instance, are three cents a portion,
and meat dishes six, while other items, such as sandwiches, vegetables,
desserts and the like are correspondingly low.
Nor is this luncheon the sole restaurant resource of the employees
within this institution. In the men's club nearly a thousand more of the
Macy family eat their midday meal each day; and eat very well indeed.
Here the meal is served at a flat rate: at the uniform and moderate cost
of thirty cents.
Under the same general management direction (the third assistant general
manager) as the restaurant is the store's supply department--not
different very much from the supply department of a big railroad or
manufacturing unit--which supplies everything for its consumption, from
coal to string; the manufacturing departments in which are produced
glass, mattresses, printing, engraving, custom-made shirts, millinery,
picture frames and paper novelties; the candy factory over near Tenth
Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street, which completely fills a big modern
six-story building; the telephone service; and the so-called public
service department.
These last facilities command our attention for a passing moment. The
telephone is, of course, the nerve-system of the Macy organization;
nothing else. Its chief ganglion is a far-reaching switchboard on which
little lights twinkle on and off and at which at a single relay sit nine
competent operators in addition to a corps of inspectors and
supervisors. The big board, from which run fifty-nine trunk-wires to the
neighboring Fitzroy exchange, is none too large. Year in and year out it
handles an average of nine thousand calls a day. And in the Christmas
season this number easily is doubled and trebled.
The public service department means exactly what it is called. It is at
the service of the public. In concrete form it is a free information
bureau, where theater seats and railroad and Pullman tickets may be
purchased at face value--and not one cent beyond, not even the usual
moderate fifty-cent advance of the hotel agencies--where astute and
marvelously informed young men and women, with a miniature library of
reference books at their immediate command, stand ready and willing to
answer all the reasonable questions that may be thrust at them. To it is
added a postal office, a telegraph office and public telephones for both
local and long distance service.
The third assistant general manager of the store also has within his
bailiwick the important department of mail orders and adjustments.
Although in the technical sense of the word Macy's today has no mail
order department--having been forced to abandon its once promising
beginning along this line because of a sheer lack of room in which to
handle it--the store each year actually receives thousands of orders for
its goods by mail, from folk who, for one reason or another, find it
inconvenient to visit it. These are received and systematically handled
in this very department. Under its adjustment division comes the
extremely interesting bureau of investigation, which concerns itself
with all complaints, and the correspondence bureau, which handles more
than ninety-five per cent. of the mail of the house.
It requires no particular keenness of imagination to see that, even with
complaints reduced to a minimum and letter-writing and handling to a
fine science, there is an infinite amount of detail in these two
departments alone--detail that reaches into every part of the store and
that necessitates a clever combination of system and diplomacy.
The exposition of the workings of the Macy organization is yet to lead
us into other chapters in which various separate subjects of interest
will be treated at greater length than here; but now is the time and
place to focus our attention upon one of the small, but extremely
important, departments that works unseen--but not unfelt--behind the
scenes. It is known as the comparison department and the work that it
does is of vast importance in the operation of the store. Its functions
are unending--and continuous. Macy's policy of underselling its
competitors is an unhalting one.
I have before me a Macy advertisement from a New York newspaper of
recent date. In a conspicuous place in it there is a card which says:
"For sixty-two years we have sold dependable merchandise at lowest in
the city prices. We are doing so now and shall continue to do so." This
was published at a time when the recent reaction from the extremely high
prices of the war period already had begun to set in; and yet this was
the big store's sole acknowledgment of the deflation sentiment--to say
nothing of hysteria--which was sweeping the town. Its competitors had
been offering their wares at reductions of from twenty to fifty per
cent. from their topmost prices, but, serene and secure in the knowledge
that its policy in selling had been consistently adhered to, Macy's only
reiterated that its prices would continue to be the lowest in the
city--quality for quality.
To hold fast to this policy, through thick and thin, has not always
been easy. Macy's has fought some royal battles in its behalf--yet not
so much because it was a policy as because with the big store in Herald
Square it has become a principle of the most fundamental sort.
More than twenty years ago the principle became extremely difficult to
maintain, because of the growing tendency of the proprietors of
articles, so patented or copyrighted as to make their imitation
practically impossible, to attempt to fix their final retail sales
price. It no longer became the mere question of whether Macy's or any
other store would have the right to undersell its competitors; it became
the fundamental question of whether the great centuries-old open market
of the world could continue to remain an open market, in the interest of
the consumer; and not a closed market, in the interest of the producer.
To maintain the first of these positions, in behalf of its patrons,
Macy's entered upon and won, almost single-handed, one of the notable
legal battles in the history of this country.
As far back as 1901--if you are a stickler for exact dates--this whole
question of price maintenance became an acute issue with Macy's. It came
to pass that when the prominent publishers of America formed an
association, one prime purpose of which was to fix the prices at which
their books would sell at retail, the store quickly saw that if this
trust agreement was permitted to stand unchallenged, its cardinal
principle of underselling its competitors, would have to be sacrificed.
Macy's did not propose to make such a sacrifice--to permit its customers
to be sacrificed--without a protest. And such a protest it prepared to
make.
Isidor Straus, then the head of the business, sat in the office of his
friend and counsel, Edmond E. Wise, in a downtown office. Mr. Wise put
the thing frankly and without equivocation before his client. He said
that it would be a hard legal fight, no doubt of that, but that a great
principle was at stake; the keen mind of the lawyer was convinced of the
economic fallacy of the position of the publishers' association.
Quietly Mr. Straus told his attorney to go ahead. He said that he would
fight the fight, to the last ditch. No expense was to be spared. The
case would be carried, if necessary, in every instance to the highest
court of appeal.
Accordingly, Mr. Wise prepared a suit against the American Publishers'
Association which holds the record for appeal in the history of
jurisprudence in this country. Three times it went up to the Court of
Appeals of the State of New York; finally, after nine years of legal
battle, it was carried to the United States Supreme Court, which, after
due deliberation, decided every point in favor of R. H. Macy & Company.
That was in December, 1913. Early in the following May the firm had the
satisfaction of having the publishers hand over a check on the Park
National Bank for $140,000. This sum represented a settlement for the
difficulties that Macy's had had to undergo for more than a dozen years
past in getting stock for its book department. Ofttimes it was
necessary to follow devious paths indeed to gain this end--and still
hold fast to the fundamental underselling policy of the store. Sometimes
the store had to go so far as to send to other retail stores to buy a
certain volume, at the full retail price, and then resell it to its
patrons, at its customary ten per cent. off the price of the store at
which it had just purchased it. So much if you please for the expense of
standing by a principle!