Inside Store Displays

( Originally Published 1902 )

There is room in plenty for taste, cleverness and artistic (likewise business) ability when engaged upon an inside store display.

A display to attract attention must possess sufficient originality to at once arrest the eye with a unique color arrangement or a scheme so harmonious and beautiful so to be truly artistic.

It pays to give proper attention to interior displays.

They lighten up the store; they soften and subdue the hard business effect; to the most prosaic merchandise they add a charm which alone possesses a pecuniary value.

The most cultured admire a fine interior exhibit.; The most ignorant are influenced by it. The great mass of shoppers are swayed by it. Dollars and cents are hypnotized by it, and the merchant who is wise always remembers this.

In every store there is a young man or woman with the taste and intelligence to properly attend to all displays. This person should be encouraged.

The fundamentals that underlie advertising and window exhibits underlie all counter, shelf and aisle displays. The first point is to catch the eye, the second, to retain it long enough to deepen the first impression.

A dress goods exhibit is comparatively easy, as there are so many color combinations that can be set in contrast.

And wash goods 1 What lovelier shelf or counter display can be made than from fresh, fashionable challies, dimities and other wash fabrics?

A silk showing can be made rich, luxurious and striking by the sheen of even one color. The silken lustre reflects another lustre in the eye of every feminine looker-on.

A suit and cloak department would not be worthy the name were not nice attention paid to the grouping of stylish gar merits on forms, racks, tables and glass cases.

As for millinery, the up-to-now department in this line is simply bewildering to a man, though " a thing of joy " to his wife, sister or near female relative.

Men's and boys' clothing and furnishings have a thousand different ways of viewing their worth and beauty, and the clever clerk with a few artistic ideas in his head need not be told this.

And so on through the whole alphabet of merchandise. Just a little thought—just a few ideas just a little work—just a little leeway from the employer, and something new and effective meets the visitor's eye every day.

The employees do not see these effects as quickly as do the customers. For outside eyes, fresh with outside impressions, see these inside ideas oftentimes quicker than inside eyes accustomed day in and day out to inside impressions.

Familiarity not only breeds contempt, but begets forgetfulness.