Designing the Department Store by Emily M. Orr;

Author:Emily M. Orr;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

3

The Shopfitting Industry

In 1916 the Dry Goods Economist editorialized, “While ‘What to Buy and How to Sell It’ has been the Economist’s slogan for over a generation, of late years emphasis has been transferred from the first three words to the last four.”1 At the turn of the twentieth century, retail trade periodicals shifted from stressing the axiom “Goods well bought are half sold” to suggesting that “Goods well displayed are half sold.”2 These modifications represented a shift in emphasis from the manufacture of the merchandise to the production of the display design for that merchandise. Harris & Sheldon, a leading British shopfitting company, fittingly took up this phrase “Goods well displayed are half sold” as its company signature.3 This slogan was not used exclusively in relationship to the department store; journalists writing for periodicals for pharmacies, grocery stores, hardware stores, and more, all invoked the motto, urging their readership to take full advantage of the commercial powers of up-to-date display. The department store with its grand scale and immense budget was able to embrace display at the most ambitious level, setting the example for a new approach to retail methods that was modeled in many smaller stores across the market and around the world.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the department store’s investment in high-style shopfittings increased and the variety of tools available on the market expanded.4 In the case of Siegel Cooper’s opening in 1898 the headlines shared, “The Big Store cost over Four Million Dollars to build. Its goods and fittings cost Two Million Dollars more.”5 Similar to the design of show window displays, the style and arrangement of shopfittings served to distinguish one store’s shopping experience from its competition. For instance, while every store sold dress accessories, not every store sold feathers under the light of a dramatic atrium suspended on a brass stand set on a rounded wooden and glass case. While shopfittings were central to the presentation of an organized and rational presentation, the fixtures also played an integral role in the continual changeover of the department store interior.

Compatibility between the fixtures, counters, and display stands established a coordinated background for the goods. As an advertisement for the 1903 opening of the new Schlesinger and Mayer praised, “Equipment and contents are in perfect harmony with the structure. The policy pervading the whole is as broad as the institution is beautiful and complete”6 (Figure 1.1). The department store’s design success was dependent upon cohesion of its many display elements. Repeated references and enumeration of shopfittings in the press and advertising materials drew consumer attention to the details of the staging and context for goods on offer.

Interpreting shopfittings as industrial and technical elements positions the department store within larger nineteenth-century trends of technology in which the machine was progressively replacing the human agent, and public spaces, from factories to stores, were increasingly optimized and rationalized for superior performance. The ideal operation of the department store relied on cooperation between designers and technical tools as well as productive relationships between display-related professions.

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