The art of decorating dry goods windows and interiors

by L. Frank Baum

If ever a window trimmer is useful to his house it is when “clearing up” sales are in order and it is necessary to reduce stock before inventory.

There are many goods left over from the holiday stocks that should not be carried another year, and the house prefers to make a reduction in price in order to close them out promptly.

Now is the trimmer’s opportunity to be useful. He is given a lot of odds and ends, at attractive prices, and told to “sell them.” His cards should be carefully and vigorously worded, his displays especially attractive. For he isn’t catering now to a public in search of goods to purchase, but a public that must be coaxed and “jollied” into buying what it really doesn’t need—and that, too, at a time when pocketbooks are especially shrunken and debilitated. Therefore the man who makes a catchy trim is rendering himself especially valuable to his employers, and trimmers should use every endeavor to make their trims count, and try to do conscientious work.

BUSINESS WINDOW.

It has lately become the fashion to discourage mechanical displays, as well as “picture” windows and elaborate trims of all sorts, under the plea that they are not “business windows.”

“Give me a plain, business window,” says the merchant; and the trimmer does not argue the question very fiercely, for it saves him a lot of thought and a lot of hard work.

What is a “business” window? What is usually meant by the term is a window that will sell goods—the final aim of all window trimming. How can a window sell goods? By placing them before the public in such a manner that the observer has a desire for them, and enters the store to make the purchase. Once in, the customer may see other things she wants, and no matter how much she purchases under these conditions the credit of the sale belongs to the window.

Now, mark one point in this statement. I said “observer.” All goods placed in a show window are not observed. Since the street is lined with windows, all filled with merchandise, few people stop to notice any of them unless there is something in the window that especially catches the eye. A “business window” that has no attractive quality is not really a business window. It is a fool window. The attractive window is the business window. To make an attractive window requires all the brain power and craft and taste and handiwork of the most expert trimmer. The inexpert trimmer is the man who decorated that window which is not attractive and which the passing throng does not see at all.

In order to make a window stand out from its fellows something more than a plain arrangement of merchandise is needed. It must be unusual and distinctive to the extent of arresting the attention of busy people as they hurry along the street.

Shrewd and observant trimmers have found that the secret of successful windows is to have a background or mechanical device that will command attention, and then to place the goods in so ingenious a manner that in looking at the display people note the excellence of the goods and desire to purchase them. It’s the old idea of first catching your hare and then cooking it. But you must catch your hare. You must have an attraction that induces the pedestrian to stop and look, or your window is a flat failure. That is why beautiful, artistic and mechanical displays are to be encouraged rather than discouraged. These are the real “business windows.”