The Romance of a Great Store

ptember; the rains are long weeks gone; and with the crops harvested, even the sails of the great mills that pump the irrigation canals full

uching the gilded minarets and towers of her great mosques. Bagdad ahead. And at Bagdad the market-places which have stood unchanged for tens of centuries. Save that in recent years there have come to them these Am

es with pride upon his purchase; shows those roundabout him the symbolism of its rarely delicate design; even to the t

e upon these pages, it would mean nothing to you. Yet out from it there comes a lace, so rare, so delicate, that one well may marvel at the human patience and the human ingenuity that conceived it. The silk comes to America, s

d has ever known. In the fearfully cold blasts of the far North, facing monotonous glaring miles of lonely ice and snow, trappers are after the seal a

en the four million other folk who dwell within fifty miles of her ancient City Hall, but between the shoe factories of Lynn, the cotton mills of Lowell and of the Carolinas, the woolen factories of the Scots and the nearer ones of Lawrence, the paper mills of the Berkshires, the porcelain kilns of Pennsylvania, between a thousand other manufacturing industries, both ver

of that silk sock upon your foot or the felt that you wear upon your head. Each has co-operated; each has correlated its effort. There are few accidents in modern business. Rule-o'-thumb has step

t at all times precede selling, while to meet competition and still sell goods at a profit, the keenest sort of shrewd merchandising must be used in purchasing. Your buyer must be no less a salesman than he who stands behind the retail counters and, wha

for women-or should know. How foolish indeed would be the merchant prince of the New York of this day who would not instantly say "yes" to the assertion that feminine taste in buying is the one thing with which his store absolutely could not dispense. So the woman buyer in our city stores is so much an acce

ce on the seventh floor from the salesforce upon the retail floors beneath. From salesclerk he-or as we have just learned, usually she-is promoted to "head of stock," which is the title of the head clerk in a department having three

nd successful "head of stock." After this should come the step to the big job-which stea

and how to buy it at the most favorable price-but they are equally responsible for knowing what to do with their purchases, once made. They are the merchants of the departments; accountable for the

cy's-in recent years at least-has not followed this policy. It has found that its own best organization comes from keeping the department as a unit; a pretty d

by a sixth sense that has no name-yet a qualification which, by its presence or its absence, makes or unmakes a buyer's value. In its

ts, pillow-cases and muslins) and, in general, the absolute necessities of life, including wearing apparel of the commoner varieties, household articles and the like. These are in constant purchase almost every day of the year. Take, for instance, that heterogeneous collection of articles, grouped under the generic a

. It must be patent that, as there is never an equal demand for these small but essential articles, the buyers must be placing constant orders for th

as upon common sense. He must have plenty for the latter, however, and it i

ess real taste and discrimination in addition to commercial ability, in order to be able to purvey these properly to the public. He handles goods which have to be bought by people who have al

those goods grouped under the common title of novelties. As one of the members of the Macy's merchandise council once observed, the departments devoted to stapl

ty. For instance, a cotton pillow-case selling for, let us say, a dollar, is a staple; while another pillow-case, of linen this time, embroidered with an old English initial,

may be costly indeed to the house that he represents. There is, in consequence, a greater demand on his nerve, his ingenuity and his imagination than you find in other classes of buyers. He must circulate where there are people-at the theaters, country clubs, restaurants, churches, in Fifth Avenue-and he must keep his

it indicates what the novelty buyer aims

I am told, for five days a week-Saturdays being generally recognized as a closed day for buying-an average of from four hundred to six hundred and fifty salesmen a day visit the buying headquarters on the seventh floor of the store. Taking into consideration the fact that the goods

ead, Isidor Straus, was a living personification-that business may be cond

out. But that Macy's does live up to this high-set principle of its behind-the-scenes conduct is evid

sold in high-priced novelty shops he now needed an establishment of great turnover to help him out in his dilemma. Macy's came at once into his mind. The old house is indeed advertised by

him for the next morning. Mr. Manufacturer chose this last course. And at the very moment of the appointed time was ushered into the buyer's little individual room. Contact was established quickly. The buyer already knew of Mr. Manufacturer's line, regretted that they had not done business together a l

. - Madison Avenue next Tuesda

the street once again. The curiosity was relieved on Tuesday, however,

t to any interruption h

fully over the stock, then withdrew for a short conference amongst themselves. Wh

r afterwards, in discussing the incident. "I paused a moment and then said: 'Gentlemen, I mean to accept your offer. You have figured well, as

into plain English, means that Macy's must and does maintain elaborate permanent office organizations in Paris, in London, in Belfast and in

elgium and Switzerland as well. He virtually combs these busy and ingenious manufacturing nations for their latest specialties; from France, les derniers cris in fashionable gowns, millin

sort and variety, in hunting the retail shops, great and small, of the French capital and at all times acting upon her own initiative as a free-lance buyer. A job surely to be coveted by any ambi

he London branch is steadily on the search for the clothing, haberdashery and leather specialties which are the pride of the British workman, while from right acro

rchandise to New York-goods of nearly every kind that can either be made better abroad or cann

rence, Massachusetts, or Norristown, Pennsylvania. Yet the buyer who goes to the old Bagdad from the new has a real task set for him. Obviously he must not only have a knowledge of his market and a keen sense of values, but he must also be a reso

region of Persia is a long way, indeed, from Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street and to reach it he went to London and Paris, then to Venice, where he took a steamer for Bombay, upon the west coast of India. Thence he proceeded by another steamer up the P

gh Kermanshah, the city whose name is given to the rugs which come from Kerman, seven hundred miles to the southeast, to Hamadan, one of the main marketing-centers of the rug-producing country-that, briefly, was the beginning of his itinerary. He went caref

en, is by Ford cars, a buyer who covers much of its territory has a rather unenviable job. Gasoline in those

tion of the rug market in that region. At ancient Siringar, in the Vale of Cashmere, he bought marvelous felt rugs made in the mysterious land

o thousand of them! He told me that with such an evident pride, as a Chicago man speaks of the population of his town, or one from Los Angeles, of his climate. And yet such a stock as that wonderful one that was told to