76 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN
positively harmful. If at the very beginning of a season the
window display covered bargain lots of the cheapest full
line or the best-selling full line, it would be a mistake.
Everyone will admit that if in order to get the immediate
dollar we show cheap goods at the wrong time, we shall have
to take greater losses on our style goods. A cheap display
at the beginning of a season keeps away from our store those
people who want the best in styles and quality. And let
me point out that while many of the merchants and buyers
who will read this book are not primarily concerned with
style, even staples are now adopting style. The Model
Stock Plan is, of course, equally effective with staples or
style goods. Styles are emphasized throughout the book
because they are more difficult to handle profitably.
It is clear that Model Stock Plan publicity gets the cus-
tomer into the store. Here we come to the fundamental
difference between a window display and an interior display.
A window’s chief job is to bring the customer into the store;
an interior display’s job is actually to sell her the goods.
Once we have the customer inside the store, the interior
display becomes of supreme importance. Here, again,
personal opinion has in the past had too much power.
The reason personal opinion has had an even more harmful
influence on interior display than on window display and
newspaper advertising is that in most stores there has been
little or no specialized expert guidance. As we have already
said, interior display deserves the full-time attention of one
or more specialists. In general, the salespeople in a selling
department are entrusted with a great deal of the interior
display. The fallacy of going at it in this haphazard way
must be apparent when we recognize that a much greater
percentage of the customers who get to the point of seeing our
interior display are actually ready to buy than of those who
are interested merely to the point of stopping before our
windows to see the window display—and any enterprising
retailer devotes a great deal of thought and frequently a
good deal of money to making his windows effective. You
see. this is what has happened: The possible customers have
