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THE STORE FRONT 



AS A SALES FACTOR 



Time was when any store front was good enough — one could conduct a 

 successful business in a hasement or in a shanty — iut in these days of keener 

 competition and higher ground values the store front demands as much 

 consideration as does the interior, the delivery service or the advertising. 



fl 



HE retailer, having invest- 

 ed his money in a hand- 

 some store interior, may 

 go on doing business year 

 after year before he dis- 

 covers that his store 

 front, while it satisfactor- 

 ily serves a purpose as the 

 front wall of his store, is 

 deficient because it is not 

 an active element in winning new 

 business. This latent attribute, an abil- 

 ity to attract new business, aside from 

 the selling aid of window displays, 

 nowadays is considered the chief esseri- 

 tial of the good store front. 



An Indefatigable Worker. 



It is a distinct selling factor that has 

 principally as a function the acquisition 

 of new, or first-time, customers, those 

 who, by reason of the good service 

 given them by the retailer, eventually 

 become regular patrons. Every new 

 buyer who comes in through the medium 

 of the store front is as good as the one 

 who is attracted by a newspaper ad- 

 vertisement; and the effective store ex- 

 terior works practically free of charge 

 365 days per year. Surely it is ob- 

 vious, then, that the front not only is 

 to be treated as a matter of plate glass 

 combined with wood, stone or metal, 

 but also is to be 

 treated as one of the 

 important sales-bring- 

 ing assets of the re- 

 tail establishment. 



This selling prop- 

 erty is rather an ab- 

 stract quality. It is 

 most easily defined 

 by its work, which is 

 to engender in the 

 minds of the people 

 who pass before the 

 store the knowledge 

 that there is a store, 

 a flower store, on 

 that particular street 

 and in that particu- 

 lar block. The suc- 

 cessful front registers 

 a vivid mental pic- 

 ture of itself on the 

 mind^ of the passers- 

 by — r. mental photo- 

 graph, as it were, 

 that will be forth- 

 coming from the mind 

 when the psycholog- 

 ical moment arrives. 



How this phase of 

 the front of the 

 store enters the 



scheme of things may be demonstrated 

 by citing an example. 



How the Front Brings Business. 



Let it be assumed that one of the 

 passers-by on his arrival home, or a 

 week or month later, had need of a bou- 

 quet or funeral piece. If he was not a 

 regular patron of some florist, undoubt- 

 edly his first move' would be to try to 

 recall a flower shop he had seen. As a 

 result of his mental operation, provid- 

 ing the knowledge had gone before, the 

 likeness of a flower store would be 

 forthcoming from the mind of the pass- 

 er-by. With it would come the associa- 

 tion of ideas, such as the street loca- 

 tion of the store and, perhaps, the name 

 of the store. In the course of events, 

 therefore, the florist whose store front 

 made a good first impression would 

 make a * * first ' ' sale and add a new 

 name to his customers' list. The re- 

 tailer with the faulty store exterior 

 would worry along without the business. 



Of course, we simply say that our 

 passer-by remembered having seen a cer- 

 tain flower store and then proceeded 

 to the store and made his purchase, but 

 his action really was the result of 

 a knowledge previously transmitted 

 through his mind's eye by a success- 

 ful store exterior. Thus it may be seen 



This Sort of Front May be AU Right for a Bank, but Not for a Flower Store. 



that the front is an important sales 

 factor in building a business, though it 

 is difficult to trace as the cause of the 

 effect. Like advertising, the front per- 

 forms through the minds of the people. 

 In the florists' business the shop that 

 frequently misses the mark in this re- 

 spect is the one with the residential- 

 like front. This is a result of the old- 

 time custom of making a salesroom out 

 of the first floor of a residence, and 

 there are specimens of the variety 

 everywhere. Some of them even have 

 the front steps and entrance of a resi- 

 dence building. Their efficiency as busi- 

 ness producers cannot be rated as high. 



Dignity Loses. 



Another case is found in the store 

 occupying a building that originally 

 housed a business not dealing in com- 

 modities, such as a banking or real es- 

 tate business. The accompanying illus- 

 tration affords a view of a flower store 

 partially disguised by its bank-like ex- 

 terior; in fact, the building originally 

 was used by bankers. "Why, that is . 

 a handsome front," one will say. Yes, 

 to be sure, but will it be remembered 

 as long and will it be recalled as easily 

 as the store shown in the illustration 

 on the next page! Decidedly not. It 

 seems almost too cold and dignified for 

 a public place of 

 barter. 



Of late years there 

 have been erected, es- 

 pecially in the large 

 towns and cities, 

 rows of stores, where 

 each front is of the 

 same architectural 

 style and appearance 

 as any one of the 

 other fronts in the 

 line. A store in such 

 a position does not 

 have the drawing 

 power of the one- 

 building store. Sev- 

 eral fronts of like 

 appearance create a 

 mental impression 

 somewhat similar to 

 that of a line of 

 black dots passed be- 

 fore the eye. They 

 are seen as an archi- 

 tectural whole rathe? — ' 

 than individually. 

 Should one of the 

 fronts be remodeled 

 and made unlike in 

 appearance to any of 

 its neighbors, its sell- 

 ing power would b« 



35S0D1 



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