SIGNIFICANCE OF STYLE
Salespersons frequently find it necessary to deepen a customer's appreciation of the fitness and beauty of a piece by the presentation of one or more additional selling features, of which the most important are construction or technical excellence, attractiveness of materials or finish, and beauty of design or style.
This should do two things:
1. Enhance the value of your merchandise.
2. Enable you to reveal technical or artistic knowledge which will increase the customer's respect.
There is no fixed or logical order for the presentation of these various selling features. Many salesmen begin with construction, but this often is a mistake. There is reason to believe that more women are interested in materials than in construction, and more in style than in materials.
What style means to you.—Style is a powerful buying motive of great and growing importance in furniture. Most of us attempt to use the style appeal only in connection with period furniture. Most women, on the other hand, identify style with fashion. They think of style in decoration as substantially the same thing as style in dress; that is, as something smartly harmonious and in the accepted mode.
Unquestionably we must develop the power to capitalize on style as our customers understand it.
The successful salesman also must be able to exploit style in the historic or period sense. The history of furniture is a selling tool of immense value, whether we are trading upon high, medium, or low levels.
The sections which discuss the more important period styles contain a mass of highly condensed information. All of this information and much more will be necessary to the man who wants to reach the higher levels of his profession, but just how much of it you will need to remember and organize for your present work is a matter to be determined by yourself. The first thing to do is to read it through carefully two or three times in order to get the broad outlines of the subject. After that study more carefully those parts of the section on "Period styles from Renaissance to early colonial," page [50], and "The American style," page [70], that can be related to your own merchandise. Make use of the suggested reading list at the end of the unit, page [79].
Glossary and reading list.—Many terms used in the section on "Period styles from Renaissance to early colonial" are uncommon and not widely understood in the furniture trade, although they are freely used in books and magazines which deal with the home furnishing art. These terms are defined in the glossary included in the appendix, pages [247] to 249.