14 



The Florists* Review 



Mahch 23, 1916. 



width to five in length, the proportions 

 of the page of The Review, is always 

 attractive. Other forms may be made 

 beautiful, and often most appropriate, 

 but none are so generally attractive as 

 the oblong. 



Another detail of retailing that has 

 its effect on the customer is the archi- 

 tecture of the store, particularly the 

 store front, its construction and its 

 colorings. Even the color of paint used 

 makes a difference that is either favor- 

 able or unfavorable to the kind of busi- 

 ness carried on. Some of the large 

 chain store concerns have made a 

 scientific study of color schemes for 

 store fronts. 



A few years ago five-and-ten-cent 

 stores were painted all sorts of colors. 

 The owner of several of them made up 

 his mind that he would find out what 

 color was best for a five-and-ten-cent 

 store business. After a careful study 

 he concluded that red and gold was 

 the best. He applied these colors to 

 all of his stores with success. Now it 

 is hard to find a five-and-ten-cent store, 

 whether owned by a syndicate or inde- 

 pendent, that is not painted red and 

 trimmed with gold. Eed and gold is 

 the scientific color scheme for the five- 

 and-ten-cent business at the present 

 time. 



Grocery chains are working with 

 orange and gold, yellow and gold and 

 white. Red seems to be the wrong 

 color for food stores. The United Cigar 

 Stores have settled upon red, black and 

 white, with gilt lettering. What is the 

 best color scheme for flower stores! It 

 is not red. Perhaps it is green and 

 gold. Have you ever given it a 

 thought? 



Department stores are working 

 towards a more uniform system of 

 architecture and coloring. They are 

 finding that there is a harmony of 

 architecture of the store with the goods 

 to be sold which when followed helps 

 the store to succeed, and when not fol- 

 lowed hinders success. 



Itlfe's Little Irritations. 



Window trimming presents ideas to 

 customers and likewise fosters good or 

 bad feeling. The entrance and door- 

 Way produce a favorable or unfavor- 

 able impression upon all who enter and 

 go out. Uneven steps, sloping walks, 

 slippery places, sticking doors, squeaky 

 hinges, doors that slam with a bang, 

 doors hard to open or close, all cause 

 customers some irritation or bad feel- 

 ing, and while these are in most cases 

 small things, they hinder the success- 

 ful selling of fiowers. 



The internal arrangement of the 

 store, the layout of the counters, refrig- 

 erator and cases, the location of the 

 stock and the ways in which the flowers 

 and plants are displayed are all impor- 

 tant factors in building a good impres- 

 sion in a customer's mind. If that im- 

 pression is not good, it will be bad. 



One of the difficult matters about all 

 these details is that what gives good 

 impressions to one customer does not 

 necessarily appeal to another in the 

 same way. The best that a retailer can 

 do is to build and plan his store and its 

 displays in such a way as to appeal to 

 the largest possible number. It will 

 be impossible to suit everybody per- 

 fectly. 



The Salesman. 



Next in order among the things likely 

 to attract the customer's attention and 



to produce ideas and consequently feel- 

 ings, is the salesman himself. The 

 way he approaches the customer, the 

 way he stands, walks, his looks, his 

 interest, the way he is dressed, his 

 voice, the way he speaks, his cleanli- 

 ness of clothes and person are highly 

 important factors in giving a good or 

 bad impression in the customer's mind. 



The salesman needs to be appropri- 

 ately dressed for his work. Not too 

 flashy or richly, nor too poorly. Either 

 extreme will attract attention to itself 

 and will detract from the purpose of 

 the store and of the salesman to sell 

 goods. Jewelry and ornaments of all 

 kinds are likely to give trouble. 



I once knew a traveling salesman 

 who said that his house gave him a 

 diamond stick pin for a Christmas pres- 

 ent because of his excellent work. He 

 said to me, "Do you know, that stick 

 pin lost me more sales than any other 

 thing I could mention? Often when 

 I had a customer on the point of get- 

 ting deeply interested in my proposi- 

 tion, his eye would catch that diamond 

 and he would look at that instead of at 

 me, with the result that I had to go all 

 over my selling talk again." 



On the Telephone. 



The importance of the voice of the 

 salesman is nowhere «o evident as in 

 the use of the telephone. Not one per- 

 son in ten knows how to use the tele- 

 phone properly. Nothing goes over the 

 wire but the sound of the voice. If the 



face is wreathed with smiles, if the 

 eyes sparkle with pleasure, while the 

 voice is cold and reserved, the listener 

 at the other end of the line gets noth- 

 ing but the cold, reserved voice expres- 

 sion and forms his impressions of the 

 speaker accordingly. Many stores ap- 

 point as telephone clerk the one whose 

 voice coincides with the telephone com- 

 pany's oft reiterated statement that 

 "the voice with the smile wins." 



Suppress All Odors. 



Another matter of importance is the 

 salesman's breath. Doctors tell us that 

 one person out of every eight or ten 

 has a bad breath. I need not tell you 

 that this makes a difference in selling. 

 The unfortunate thing about it is that 

 the person who has a bad breath never 

 knows about it until told. Store man- 

 agers should handle cases of bad breath 

 in a frank manner, and every sales- 

 person should make sure that his or 

 her breath is right by getting some 

 frank friend to say whether the breath 

 is sweet or not. An odor of drink, 

 cloves or tobacco is almost as bad as 

 fetid breath, and many persons find 

 perfumes objectionable. 



Successful retail selling rests upon 

 a thousand and one details all per- 

 formed well. Good retail salesmanship 

 consists in making all the conditions 

 right for the display of our stock under 

 favorable conditions, and then in show- 

 ing the fiowers and plants in detail, just 

 as the customer wants them shown. 



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PUTTINO PEP IN WINDOWS. 



Current Events in Advertising. 



In any comjwehensive textbook on 

 advertising the reader will come upon 

 a chapter dealing with current events 

 as related to advertising, in which the 

 author explains how occurrences of 

 common interest to the masses may be 

 profitably employed by advertisers. It 

 is demonstrated that if an important 

 event of the day or week is incorpo- 

 rated into the start, or headline, of 

 the printed advertisement, the atten- 

 tion-winning power of that advertise- 

 ment is greatly enhanced. 



In the late summer of 1914, a few 

 days before the declaration of war by 

 the various powers of Europe, the news- 

 paper, carried large, black scare heads 

 telling of the mobilization of troops 

 by the countries now at war. The peo- 

 ple of the United States easily con- 

 sumed all the news printed about the 

 approaching storm, talked war morning, 

 noon and night; in fact, everybody was 

 more than interested in the proceedings 

 on the other side of the ocean. 



An Example. 



At Chicago, on the day that the daily 

 papers told of Russia's mobilization of 

 troops on its frontiers, a retailer came 

 out with a large newspaper advertise- 



ment, with this headline in heavy, black 



type: "We are mobilizing " 



Directly underneath this display line, 

 in light-faced type, the sentence read 

 on: "20,000 shirts for tomorrow's 

 sale." This is a fair example of ad- 

 vertising in which a subject of current 

 interest was utilized. There is no doubt 

 that the heading, "We are mobil- 

 izing," on that day caught the eyes 

 of many readers who would not have 

 seen the advertisement had it been 

 headed something like this: "Shirts 

 tomorrow at $1.50." The people were 

 looking for literature on the war, and 

 this advertiser, by his clever headline, 

 got a good many of them to read his 

 ad. Subsequently the same advertiser 

 devised other more clever headlines, all 

 dealing with the war, but, neverthe- 

 less, relevant to the text that followed. 



In Window Displays. 



But this adaptation of current events 

 to advertising is not confined to the 

 printed advertisement. Window dis- 

 plays, which are a form of advertising, 

 can be made to more efficiently attract 

 the passers-by by the same means. We 

 have had .war windows, showing minia- 

 ture aeroplanes, submarines, forts, etc. 

 Then there are windows for Washing- 

 ton's and Lincoln's birthdays. Thanks- 

 giving day, baseball and, during the 



