Automatic Age

the a u t o m a t ic a g e
V Q L. 6_________________ CHICAGO, N O V E M B ER , 1929_________________ No. 4
PENNY SCALES KEEP STEP W ITH
MERCHANDISING PROGRESS
By S T A N L E Y N O W A K , Vice-President, the International Ticket
Scale Corporation— (B y permission from Chain Store Review)
Today the average American citi­
Zen has a fairly good idea o f what
the chain stores mean to him and his
family in savings on the necessities
° f life. The chain store industry has
told its story so well and backed it
UP with such consistent performances
that its value in the scheme o f dis­
tribution is apparent to all. But it
is doubtful if the influence o f the
chain store on manufacturing is so
generally appreciated.
Y et to the manufacturer the ad­
vent o f the chain store has been o f
perhaps even greater significance
than to the general public. This hau
been demonstrated with increasing
force o f late through the develop­
ment o f automatic merchandising.
^ nd it is here that the revolutioniz-
mg influence o f the chain store may
he most clearly seen and analyzed.
W ithout the thousands o f chain
store outlets, centrally controlled by
business experts on the alert f jr any
new economy, it is clear that auto­
matic merchandising would not have
reached its present stage o f develop­
ment. It still has far to go, natur­
ally, but the trails have been blazed
and the lines along which it will de­
velop in the future are becom 'ng in­
creasingly clear.
The significant thing about auto­
matic merchandising today is the fact
that the retailer is receiving as much
— if not more — consideration from
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the manufacturer as the consumer.
And the chain stores have played an
important part in bringing this about.
In other words, the manufacturer o f
automatic merchandising devices re­
gards the retailer as far more than
a doubtful rung in the ladder o f dis­
tribution. He knows that, through
the chain store, his product will be
distributed with the same scientific
precision that entered into its manu­
facture. And this means that the
opportunities and rewards fo r in­
genuity and initiative in manufactur­
ing— definitely limited in the past by
h a p h a z a r d retailing — are today
boundless.
A good illustration o f the new
trend — the clo e interrelation be­
tween manufacturer and retaMer— is
provided by the ccale industry. Within
the past few yearc, the number o f
scales on the market has increased at
a tremendous rate. And along with
this tremendous increase in the num­
ber o f scales have come strikingly
original improvements in scale de­
sign. The chain stores have provided
a considerable share c f the impetus.
Meeting the Store’s Needs
A few years ago the scale was
merely an incon picuous device for
weighing articles— and people if they
wanted to be weighed. Its possibili­
ties as a consistent profit producer
for every store were entirely unap­
preciated. But today thousands o f
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