DE LUXE GOODS FOR DE LUXE CUSTOMERS 73 
their purchases of non-style goods will also be important to 
the store. 
As we have shown, the value of these free-spending, early 
buying customers is far less in their volume of buying and the 
direct profits we make on these sales than in the influence 
they exert in gaining us recognition as a high-class store 
that can be depended on as style headquarters for our com- 
munity. Even though the value of the de luxe trade sales 
volume is more obvious, the recognition as style headquarters 
is more important. 
To cite an actual example without names, a motion picture 
actress, famous for being particularly well dressed, bought, 
In a middle western shoe and hosiery store, $200 worth of 
chiffon stockings. Through the next several weeks its 
hosiery business picked up more than zo per cent, a gain 
that the management ascribed to the publicity given to 
the actress’ purchase. 
There is still another important advantage that the store 
can obtain from successful de luxe departments. De luxe 
customers buy freely just as early as the new goods for a 
season can be shown. This is obviously very useful to the 
buyers for the three full lines, for it helps them to determine 
which styles will be really popular in their store’s environ- 
ment. As we have already seen, people who buy at mass 
levels generally want articles similar to those of the society 
leaders and very wealthy people, the style leaders who 
constitute our de luxe trade. 
There are really valid reasons why the de luxe trade can 
be more efficiently handled—and, therefore, why it should 
be handled—in other classes of retail establishments than 
the specialty shops. The specialty shops have many serious 
drawbacks from the standpoint of scientific merchandising. 
Yet they go ahead making good profits if the taste of their 
proprietors is good enough. 
Because most of the de luxe specialty shop owners are by 
nature artistic and so proportionately temperamental, it 
seems to be generally believed that they cannot work in a 
large organization. There is this basis of fact in the idea: