SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES.
Genius consists in taking advantage of opportunities quite as much as in making them. Here was a young man doing things in an advertising way regardless of the custom of the business world, and with a wonderful knowledge of human nature. He took common-sense advantage of opportunities that were open to everybody.
Soon after the balloon experience, tally-ho coaching began to be a Philadelphia fad of the very exclusives. Immediately afterward a crack coach was secured, and six large and spirited horses were used instead of four, and Oak Hall employees, dressed in the style of the most ultra coaching set, traversed the country in every direction, scattering advertising matter to the music of the horn. Sometimes they would be a week on a trip. No wonder Oak Hall flourished. It was kept in the very front of the procession all the time.
A little later, in the yachting season, the whole town was attracted and amused by processions and scatterings of men, each wearing a wire body frame that supported a thin staff from which waved a wooden burgee, or pointed flag, reminding them of Oak Hall. Nearly two hundred of these prototypes of the “Sandwich man” were often out at one time.
But it was not only in the quick catching of a novel advertising thought that the new house was making history; in newspaper advertising, it was even further in advance. The statements of store news were crisp and unhackneyed, and the first artistic illustrations ever put into advertisements were used there. So high was the grade of this picture-work that art schools regularly clipped the illustrations as models; and the world-famous Shakespearean scholar, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, treasured the original sketches of “The Seven Ages” as among the most interesting in his unique collection.
As a storekeeper he was just as original. It was the universal rule in those days, in the clothing trade, not to mark the prices plainly on the goods that were for sale. Within rather liberal bounds, the salesman got what he could from the customer. Mr. Wanamaker, after a time, instituted at Oak Hall the plan of “but one price and that plainly marked,”—the beginning of still another revolution in business methods. He saw to it that customers had prompt and careful attention. If a sale was missed, he required a written reason for it from the salesman. There was no haphazard business in that store,—nothing of the happy-go-lucky style. Each man must be alert, wide-awake, attentive, or there was no place for him at Oak Hall.
ECONOMICAL WAYS.
And Mr. Wanamaker’s habits of economy were never relaxed. It is told of him that, in the earlier days of Oak Hall, he used to gather up the short pieces of string that came in on parcels, make them into a bunch, and see that they were used when bundles were to be tied. He also had a habit of smoothing out old newspapers, and seeing that they were used as wrappers for such things as did not require a better grade of paper.
A considerable portion of the trade of the new store came from people in the country districts. Mr. Wanamaker had a way of getting close to them and gaining their good will. An old employee of the firm says: “John used to put a lot of chestnuts in his pocket along in the fall and winter, and, when he had one of these countrymen in tow, he’d slip a few of the nuts into the visitor’s hand and both would go munching about the store.” Another salesman of the old house says: “If we saw a man come in chewing gum, we knew it was of no use trying to sell him anything. You see, he was sure to be as green as grass and fully convinced that we were all watching for a chance to cheat him. John said it was all nonsense; that such people came on purpose to buy, and were the easiest people in the world to sell to. And he would prove it. He would chew gum with them, and talk farm or crops or cattle with them. They’d buy of him every time. But none of us could ever get his knack of dealing with countrymen.”
There it is. This young merchant understood human nature. He put his customer at ease. He showed interest in the things that interested the farmer. He was frank and open with him, and just familiar enough not to lose a bit of the respect and deference that superiority commands.