Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
T
H E trends in window shopping have
changed. People no longer amble by,
pause on the sidewalk to admire the
window displays and take their own
good time about looking in at the windows for
the jostling crowds soon remind them to move-
on. In this modern age passersby are spending
but eleven seconds of their precious minutes at
the most in looking in at your store front or
gazing at your window displays. And so the
store f r o n t of
y e s t e rday no
longer lends it-
self to modern
m e r chandising
methods, for in
its place have
stepped
the
island window
display, the unit
system, the ar-
cade lobby, and
the ensemble of
today.
T h e musical
m e r e handiser,
therefore, who
is not up-to-
date in this re-
spect is not pro-
d u c i n g
the
m a x i m u m
amount of sales
through
his
w i n d o w dis-
p l a y s by en-
couraging more
window shopping. The crowds elbow by with-
out stopping in. This is an age of speed and
the old days of rambling and promenading
have disappeared.
People are hurrying as never before. It is
therefore becoming increasingly important that
your store front should not only stop passersby,
but that your window displays should do a
quick job of selling in the allotted eleven
seconds. Modern store fronts with new, more
novel and unique window displays are required
to speed up selling and to keep in step with the
laws of speed. As a net result good selling
windows are no longer a hodge-podge or con-
glomeration of everything that the store has
for sale but they are concentrated flashes of
highly concentrated merchandise, which tell a
quick selling story in a concise and gripping
manner.
Since window shopping is being done less
leisurely it naturally follows that the musical
merchandiser who would get the utmost value
out of his window displays must keep in step
with the demands of the modern age in which
we live. He must recognize that the efficiency
of the old forms of advertising and selling have
passed out of the picture. Here is a new era
of merchandising—
the kind that steps
up with the movies,
the a i r p l a n e , the
radio and the auto-
mobile to catch the
public eye by con-
forming to this age
of speed.
Good store fronts
catch the eye and
fetching
window
displays bring them
in where your sales-
men can do the rest.
Good s t o r e fronts
pull the crowds just
as much as good movie fronts and good pic-
tures will pull them in. People are like moths
—they constantly seek the light. The people
who constitute the endless throngs that pass by
stores in the various shopping centers of our
cities and towns are all potential buyers, and
the law of human averages tells the wide-awake
musical merchants that the value of his store
front and his window displays will largely de-
pend on whether they succeed in gaining the
attention of this throng and incite buying im-
pulses which not only actuate them to pause,
but during the moment of admiration and hesi-
tation influence them to buy then and there.
Bright and well-trimmed store windows na-
turally draw the crowds. They are beautiful
trade magnets. The touch of colorsome atmos-
phere and a colorful store front naturally cap-
tures and holds interest. They all help to fix
the store location more firmly in the minds of
as many people as it is possible to reach, who
pass and repass day in and day out, fifty-two
weeks in the year, and every one of them a
potential customer. Good store fronts and
bright
snappy
w i n d o w s na-
turally compete
s u c c e s s fully
with o t h e r or
similar lines of
business and in
doing so achieve
a larger share
in the spending
power of the
public purse.
The
desires
of people are
constantly
c h a n g ing and
the music mer-
chant who does
not keep in step
with style and
the demands of
youth will slow-
ly fade out of
the
picture
without grasp-
ing the cue. He
may be con-
cerned
with
trade falling off,
but not know