machines; a sort of continuous drone. You turn quickly and find beside
you a row of ticket-printers, the little electric presses in which are
made the price-tags that you find pinned or pasted or tied on every
piece of Macy merchandise you buy. Miles of thin cardboard are fed into
one side of these machines and come out the other; in proper-sized
units, with the selling price of the article to be tagged plainly
printed on them. Where the article is subject to Federal tax, this is
also included as a separate item and the total given. One of these
machines combines the operation of printing the price and attaching the
ticket to the garment. It is detail--necessary detail, detail upon a
vast scale.
Here, then, is the receiving department of this great single retailing
machine of modern business. It keeps over three hundred human units
constantly upon the move--and, mind you, all that these people are doing
is merely making the merchandise ready to sell. The next step is the
final one before actual sale; the display of proffered goods--upon the
counters and within the plate-glass windows along the street frontages.
This, in the modern department-store, is considered a feature of the
utmost importance, and nowhere more so than at Macy's. Sixty-four years
of salesmanship experience, in the course of which it has been the
originator of many daring and successful display experiments, has shown
the house their full value.
Yet, even in Macy's, there are certain reservations to the strong house
policy of attractive display. Certain fundamentals are stressed. The
invitation to buy is forever put in the goods themselves rather than in
the background against which they are shown. It requires no especial
astuteness to see from this fact alone an enormous expense is saved; the
benefit of which, according to the now well understood Macy plan, is
passed on to buyer. Other stores spend many thousands of dollars in
building and decorating special rooms and sections for merchandising
which are far out of the ordinary. To give an air of extreme
exclusiveness, _chic_, Parisian atmosphere--call it what you
may--elaborate partitions are put up and expensive decorators given
carte-blanche. The result is beautiful, almost invariably. Shopping in
such surroundings becomes a peculiar delight--particularly to the woman
patron. But milady pays. In the expressive, if not elegant, old phrase
she "pays through the nose."
That some New York shoppers may like to pay this way is not for a moment
to be doubted, but that the majority do, Macy's stoutly refuses to
believe. While the house has not hesitated to install certain very
lovely "special" rooms--_vide_ the _salon_ for the display of its
imported frocks--the main thought in the construction of its present
home in Herald Square was to build a retail market-place which would
afford honest, efficient, comfortable marketing at the lowest possible
prices. This meant that it would be inadvisable, to say the least, to
give the store the atmosphere of either a palace or a _boudoir_. This is
a policy that has continued until this day.
None the less, Macy goods are displayed with the taste that makes them
most desirable to the customer; psychological forethought, in a word.
Novelties, of course, take precedence over staples--the articles that
make the customer stop and investigate. Except under unusual conditions,
the demand for staples does not have to be stimulated, and ordinarily no
especial attempt is made to give them more than ordinary display. One
underlying factor in the successful display of goods is to preserve
harmonious color relations between them and, so far as possible, this
harmony pervades the entire floor. The buying public would not tolerate
a store where they heard profanity among the employees; and at Macy's
they do not have to endure colors that swear at one another.
Held in high esteem by the public as well as by the store itself are the
display windows which line the entire ground-floor frontage of the
building on Broadway and on Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Streets. Here
merchandise is arranged by master window dressers under the general
direction of the advertising department, for if the front windows of a
house such as this are not advertising, what, then, is? Especially when
the art of window dressing has come in recent years to be a finely
developed art of its own. For many years before it left Fourteenth
Street Macy's had a fame not merely nation-wide but fairly world-wide
for its window displays--we already have referred to the wondrous
Christmas pageants that it formerly held as a part of them. In this it
was again a pioneer, blazing a new commercial path for its competitors
to follow.
Because window display is recognized as advertising, the ceaseless work
of the master window dressers upon the outer rim of the Macy store comes
under the direct supervision of the advertising department which in turn
reports direct to no less an authority than the triple partnership
itself. Publicity is the great right-arm of the super-store of the
America of today. Publicity not in one channel, but in a thousand.
Macy's not only helps to dominate the advertising pages of the
newspapers of New York and a good many miles round about it, its red
star not only gleams in Herald Square, but in these very recent days
upon the high-set electric hoardings of Times Square that blaze forth
far into the night; it finds its way into the public thought here and
there and everywhere. And yet, with due appreciation of every other
medium of publicity, the street window of the store still remains one of
the most important phases of its appeal to possible patrons.
Its displays are scheduled long in advance; are devised as carefully as
the decoration of a home might be, or, better still, as Urban or Pogany
would plan the stage-settings of a scene in the Metropolitan or at any
one of the various "Follies" that one finds just north of the Opera
House. A large staff of men is kept constantly at work dressing the
windows, and this staff includes the carpenters, paper-hangers, painters
and electricians who are needed to help prepare the special exhibits.
Under the floor of the window next the principal entrance on
Thirty-fourth Street there is a tank, which is used when a pool of water
is required to carry out some scenic effect. It is capable of floating a
canoe to suggest the joys of camping and the need of going to Macy's for
one's vacation requisites--as well as for use in other capacities. Known
in the store as the "parlor window" it has been made to represent pretty
nearly everything from milady's bedroom to a glorified carpenter shop.
Window displays are regarded by Macy's as an important auxiliary to
newspaper announcements. Very recently, during the few weeks before
Christmas, a sale of overcoats was advertised. All the windows were then
dressed with Christmas merchandise, but from one of them this was all
removed and the sale overcoats substituted. For one day only. For upon
the very next one the Christmas window was returned to its holly and
mistletoe flavor.
Here is a pretty direct indication of the store's attitude towards its
immensely valuable windows--if you do not consider them valuable inquire
the price of the advertising signs in the Herald Square neighborhood. I
asked its advertising manager if, in his opinion, the window space would
not bring better returns if it were devoted to direct selling, instead
of mere indirect selling through display. I had in the back of my mind
some of the great Paris emporiums who think so little of window- and so
much of selling-space that on bright warm days they spread some of their
notions and novelty-counters right out upon the broad sidewalks of the
Boulevards.
"No," said he, "decidedly no. To be able to show one's goods to the
multitudes that pass these windows nearly every hour of the day is an
asset that cannot be overestimated."
This is neither the time nor the place to go into the ethics or the fine
principles of the most recently developed of American
professions--advertising; the salesmanship of goods and of ideas not so
much by the merchandise itself as by the representation of it. Neither
is it the place to review the vast position that the modern department
store has taken in the development of modern advertising of every sort:
Newspapers, magazines, bill-boards, electric signs, other forms of
display as well. There are folk who say that if it were not for the
department-store advertising we should not have had the fully developed
metropolitan newspaper of today; while, on the other hand, some of the
larger merchants are not reluctant in saying that our modern
metropolitan newspapers are the chief causes that have made the
department-store as we know it in New York and other large cities of the
United States possible. Be these things as they may, the fact does
remain, however, solid and indisputable, that the co-operation between
these two groups of interests has been more than profitable to their
patrons, to say nothing of themselves. And not the least of the
contributing causes to such profits is the fundamental honesty of the
advertisements.
Not so very many years ago the measure of integrity in advertising was,
to speak charitably, a variable one. When they talked about them in
print merchants were very likely to become overenthusiastic about their
goods. Modesty was flung to the four winds. Printers' ink seemed to be
taken as an automatic absolution for exaggeration--and oftimes absolute
mis-statement--and, strangely enough, the public appeared to fall in
with the idea. More often than not the merchant "got away with it"--or,
if not, made good with bad grace, in which case the customer was
satisfied. He had to be.
But not so with Macy's. Early in its history an advertising policy was
formulated that has endured to the present and will continue to endure.
It is the house's stoutly expressed belief that there is no possible
excuse whatsoever for misrepresentation and, following this out, it is
its invariable rule to stand back of its advertising, to the last ditch.
To this end it has inculcated such a spirit of conservatism into its
advertising department that the superlative is eliminated and forbidden
in describing Macy goods. "We may think that these articles are the
best, or the most beautiful, or the greatest bargain, but we can't
absolutely be sure of it." That is its attitude. The only possible
criticism is the same that one applies to the man who stands so straight
that he leans backward.
Is the system flawless? Of course not--no system is. Not many weeks ago
an incident occurred that shows how Macy's may slip up--and then make
good; it put out a small newspaper advertisement featuring coats for
small boys at $8.74. These were advertised as "wool chinchilla" and so
potent was the appeal of the notice that by ten o'clock the entire
stock of nine hundred coats was gone. Then one of the store executives
discovered that the coats were not _all wool_ and things began to hum.
"Never said that they were all wool," the responsible sub-executive
cornered. "People ought to know that they can't buy an all-wool coat for
that money."
That made no difference with the big boss. Patiently and firmly he
explained that in a Macy advertisement "wool" means "all-wool" except
where it is clearly specified that it contains cotton. Another
advertisement was inserted in the newspapers the following day. It
explained and apologized for the mis-statement and said, "We would deem
it a favor if our customers would bring in these coats and accept a
return of their money." Out of the nine hundred coats sold one was
brought back for credit, while another was brought in by a customer who
wanted to keep the coat but thought that she might get a rebate. She
didn't. Macy's may lean over backward but it doesn't drag on the
ground--an instance of which is contained in the following:
Christmas candy for Sunday Schools was advertised in a number of New
York newspapers at the very low price of $7.44 for one hundred pounds.
In one newspaper three pieces of type fell out of the form with the
result that the advertisement went to press quoting a hundred-weight of
candy at forty-four cents! It was patent that it was a typographical
error, for the decimal point, as well as the dollar mark and the figure
7 was gone and there was a blank space where the types were missing.
Three would-be customers tried, however, to hold the store accountable
for the very obvious error. And Macy's balked!
The lowest-in-the-city-prices policy keeps the advertising department on
its toes continually. Other stores' prices must be anticipated wherever
it is humanly possible, which means constant revisions of the copy.
Occasionally a price duel develops that becomes spectacular in the
extreme. In a recent memorable one "hard water soap" figured as the
_casus belli_. Macy patrons know their right now to expect lowest
prices, so when another store began to cut Macy's advertised prices on
this commodity, Macy's had to return in suite. Whereupon the other store
cut under Macy's again; and Macy's in turn went its competitor one
better. It then became a merry game of parry and thrust until, one fine
day, Macy's was selling twelve dozen cakes of hard water soap for the
inconsiderable sum of one copper cent. One came near godliness for a
small amount that day. The public profited hugely, but Macy's lived up
to its policy.
As a rule advertisements originate with the department managers. Keeping
in mind that they are the buyers, the merchants responsible for the
moving of their stock, it can be seen that they know best the goods that
ought to be featured. The value of the space used is charged against
their departments, so that their requisitions are governed accordingly.
The advertising manager is a large factor, however, in the allotment of
space--not only the clearing-house, but practically the court of last
resort--concerning the rival claims by the department manager for space
upon a given day. After all, there is a limit to the size of a newspaper
page.
When a certain line of goods is about to be advertised, the comparison
department is notified and the articles are "shopped." That is, one or
more of the expert shopping staff is given the task of ascertaining what
other stores are charging for the same things so that it may be made
sure that the Macy price will be lower. The information then is passed
on to the copy writing staff and samples of the goods are studied for
selling points. While the description is being written, one of the art
staff makes a drawing, either in the nature of a design or illustration,
and when these are completed the advertisement is set in type. This,
bear in mind, is only for one item. Macy advertisements, more often than
not, cover an entire newspaper page and are made up of many separate
items, each of which goes through practically the same process of
creation. Their final collection and arrangement on the page are made by
an advertising expert of skill and taste and from this fact, combined
with the distinctive type faces that are commonly used, one might be
reasonably sure of identifying a Macy advertisement even if the store
name were to be entirely omitted.
In addition to window display, newspaper and magazine announcements, it
is the concern of the advertising department to provide the store with
its sign cards and special-price tickets. These are all a part of the
big problem of letting the public know about Macy goods. Yet above and
beyond all of these things, the store's supreme advertisement, if you
please, is the establishment itself, the service that it strives so
sincerely to give. To use the current phrase of expert publicity men,
the store, its salespeople and its prices must _sell_ Macy's to the
outside world. Outside advertising is but supplementary to this; but a
single horse in a team of four.
With this fact firmly fixed in your mind, consider next the unbending
problem of making the salesforce into a genuine salesforce; one that
constantly and continually backs up the force of the printed
advertisement by the skill of its real salesmanship. When we come in
another chapter to consider the Macy family as a whole we shall see in
some detail its remarkable educational and training opportunities. These
have been brought to bear directly upon the creation, not only of
thoroughness and accuracy on the part of the clerk, but for courtesy and
persuasiveness and enthusiasm as well--the things that make the
structure of morale; that quality that we first began to know and to
understand as such in the days of the Great War.
"If you are playing a game, such as tennis, or bridge, or baseball or
what-not," said one of the department managers to his sales staff but a
few mornings ago, "you are out to beat your best friend; if you can, do
it fairly and squarely, otherwise never. The enjoyment you derive from a
game depends on the spirit with which you play it. When you begin to
regard business in a similar light, playing it as a game in a
sportsmanlike manner, then you will begin to get fun out of it--you
will begin to make progress."
After the preliminary training which every salesclerk receives, he or
she is assigned to a department. Thenceforward a good deal depends on
personal initiative; for in dealing with customers no small part of the
store's reputation for efficiency and courtesy depends upon the
individual clerk. A salesperson may become not only a distinct asset to
the house, but may develop a personal clientele through especially
intelligent and courteous attention to the customers' wishes. And this,
owing to the system of allowing a bonus on sales above a certain fixed
quota, and a commission on sales up to that quota, may make it
financially very much worth while to him or her.
Salesmanship in a store as large as Macy's must of necessity include the
knowledge of considerable detail in the making out of sales slips,
procedure with regard to C. O. D. deliveries, depositors' accounts,
exchanges and the like. This knowledge is a fundamental part of each
salesperson's equipment. His or her efficiency must come, however, from
a far wider development of the possibilities of the salesmanship, from
the "playing of the game," as the department manager put it but a moment
ago--the understanding use of courtesy, merchandise knowledge,
helpfulness. Such efficiency pays. The Macy folk who come to use it
regularly soon find themselves advancing to responsible and highly-paid
positions.
It is interesting to follow the career of a sales slip from the time it
is made out--when the sale is made--until the time that it ceases to
function. Here is one of the most important items in the mechanism of a
large retail store. It is an essential unit of a carefully developed
system to keep track of sales, from the minute that they are made until
they are finally delivered and audited.
The sales slip--the Macy clerk has three different ones of them in
all--is made in three distinct parts--original, duplicate and
triplicate. Each of these is divided into several parts; each of which
in turn is destined for separate hands. The packer of the merchandise
gets one part, which eventually goes to the customer, a second to the
cashier, the third the clerk retains. Eventually these last two come
together once again in the auditing department and are checked, the one
against the other; after which one goes into the archives of the bureau
of investigation, in case that there is any further question about the
details of the transaction. This one example of the infinite detail in
the conduct of a great store is a slight indication of the
responsibility upon the shoulders of not only its managers but the rank
and file of its salesforce as well. A single error in the making out of
a sales slip may easily result in expensive and harassing complications
all the way along the line.
A system of transfer books enables the store's customer to make
purchases in its various departments with the least possible waiting.
The goods and prices are entered in a small book which is given the
customer at the time of the first purchase of the day. While the
customer is making his or her other purchases they are being sent to the
wrapping room where they are held in a growing group until the customer
presents the book to the cashier at the transfer desk on the main floor,
pays the total and, a few minutes later, receives a neat package in
which all of the items are wrapped together; or else it is sent to any
designated address.
Enough, for the moment, of detail. Some of it is necessary to a proper
understanding of the workings of this great machine of modern business,
but too much of it may easily bore you. Instead, quickly turn your
attention to a Macy feature dear to the heart of the average
shopper--male or deadlier. Here is the familiar, the time-honored
"special sale." In holding these Macy does not lay claim to originality,
except perhaps in the amount of merchandising involved and the
spectacularly low prices. Sales are in a large measure opportunities for
the store as well as for the customer. It takes a goodly amount of
merchandise from a manufacturer who for some reason offers a large
concession in price and passes on its advantage to its customers. This
is not generosity. It is good business. It is sound business. It is
progressive business.
Take a sale of laundry soap that went on within the great store about a
year ago. The soap was made in this country and contracted for by the
city of Paris, upon a dollar basis. Exchange slumped, and with francs
worth only a fraction of their former value, Paris couldn't afford to
take it. Macy's offer for it was accepted and so marked was the
reduction at which it was offered to the public that inside of two weeks
the big store had sold twenty-two carloads of it. Figuring from the fact
that a carload comprised six hundred cases, the turnover amounted to
6,862 cases; or, counting a hundred bars to a case, 686,200 pieces of
soap!
The most successful sale of winter underwear that Macy's ever held took
place during a very warm week in July, a twelvemonth before the laundry
soap episode. A large manufacturer wanted to unload his stock and Macy's
bought it for cash. Add to these facts the consideration that the goods
were away out of season and you can readily see how it was possible to
buy the goods at a very low price. Relying upon the public's ability to
judge values, in and out of season, the store launched the sale--and
launched it successfully. It was like a scene out of _Alice in
Wonderland_ to see the crowds of men and women with perspiration rolling
down their foreheads buying woolen "undies" against the needs of winter.
Americans do like to be forehanded.
Macy's ability to buy and sell huge quantities of merchandise is
demonstrated through these sales. Very recently over seven thousand of a
particular leather traveling bag were sold in less than four weeks, at
an aggregate price of nearly $75,000. In one day seven hundred vacuum
cleaners were sold for $29.75 each. This list might be continued
indefinitely; for not only has Macy's proved that it pays to advertise
but that it pays to follow the Macy advertisements.