The Romance of a Great Store Part 7

The second and the third a.s.sistant managers are the heads of non-selling organizations within the store, the fourth and the fifth handle the training and the educational departments, respectively. The second a.s.sistant has, as his especial responsibility, the merchandise checkers, the collectors, the stock clerks, the cashiers and the interior mail and messenger service. The other non-selling a.s.sistant general manager supervises the receiving department, the department of money orders and adjustments, the supply department, the delivery, the receiving, the time office, the manufacturing, and sundry other smaller specialties of the store; small, however, only in a comparative sense. Taken by themselves they quickly would be seen to be sizable indeed.

The tasks of most of these departments are fairly obvious from their names. Some of the others we shall see in a bit of detail as we go further into the store and its workings. In other chapters we shall describe what the great delivery department is supposed to accomplish, and actually does accomplish, the scope and plan and reach of the departments of training and of employment, and some others, too. It takes no great strain upon the imagination to conceive of the importance of the detective bureau's work, nor that of the superintendent of buildings.

So much, then, for a preliminary bird's-eye view of a mammoth machine, not a machine for turning out shoes or typewriters or paper, but for buying and selling all these things and many, many more. And as you read in the earlier part of this book, the huge mechanism did not spring into its being in a year, or in a decade, or even in a generation. It represents slow, hard, steady growth; and slow, hard, steady growth it is still having.

There are now one hundred and eighteen departments in Macy's and yet, out of many thousands of separate and distinct items, there are some things that the store does not sell. Some of these commodities are handled by other great department-stores. But while Macy's may and does follow a charted path, it is its own chart and its own path. It never follows blindly the pathways of others. So, for instance, it does not sell pianos. In this particular case, at least, the reason is not hard to discover. Remember, all the while, that Macy's sells for cash and for cash alone--always and forever; and then consider that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, pianos are sold upon the installment plan. The installment plan is entirely outside of the Macy scheme of salesmanship.

It may or may not be a good plan. But to adopt it Macy's would either have to change its selling policy or else dispose of so few pianos that it would not be profitable to maintain a department for them. This is the alpha and the omega of the piano, as far as Macy's is concerned. It has no intention either of changing its deep-rooted and well-founded selling policy, nor, on the other hand, of establishing a little-used and possibly unprofitable department. Upon this decision it stands quite content.

Yet a.s.suredly Macy's is organized to sell nearly all of the necessities of life--and an unusually large number of the luxuries in addition. From hosiery to ice cream, from women's suits to artists' materials, from eye-gla.s.ses to sausages, and from petticoats to ukeleles, the list of the store's wares is almost without limit. Other furniture is not hedged about by the same merchandising traditions and restrictions as are pianos; there are in the upper floor of this great market-place pieces of household furnishings whose prices run well into the hundreds and even thousands of dollars, to say nothing of rare Oriental rugs, fine paintings and other works of art.

These one hundred and eighteen departments have been arranged after long study and experience and well thought out plans. In fact, so many conflicting and intricate features have entered into their planning that it is hardly possible within the s.p.a.ce of these pages to give more than the broad general policy of the department organizations of the store.

Yet it is another of these fairly obvious principles that upon its main floor--where its s.p.a.ce, square foot by square foot, is by far at its highest value, and where there is a maximum of accessibility--should be displayed the items that sell the most quickly and the most readily.

This follows the very reasonable theory that goods for which there is the most popular demand should at all times be the most accessible.

Varying slightly in specific cases and conditions, as one ascends into the five upper selling floors of the store, the merchandise falls more and more into cla.s.sifications that call for care and deliberation in the purchasing. Thus, upon the main floor, one will find such articles as umbrellas, books, candy, notions, and the like--to make but a few instances out of many--while upon the second, there will be yardage goods, linens, shoes and so forth.

Parenthetically, it may be set down that in older days, yardage goods--meaning cloths and weaves of almost every sort--never used to be found above the ground floor of any department-store. Retail merchandising tradition in New York suffered a body blow some years ago when Macy's sent them upstairs. Even the men who worked in the department protested against the change. A sizable proportion of their income was and is in their commissions upon their total volume of sales.

They could not see the sales upstairs.

"For two cents I'd resign," said one of the veterans, just as the change was announced.

No one offered him the two cents, however, and he remained. And the following year saw the department reach a new high level for total sales in its yard goods.

One large reason for this in Macy's is the unusual accessibility of the upper floors from the street level. It required little or no effort for the customer to get to the second floor, or, for that matter, to the sixth. The store's unusual and fairly marvelous system of escalators, well-placed, smooth running, always available, and to be safely used by even a rheumatic or a cripple, bring these self-same upper floors at all times within easy reach of the street, and without the use of the firm's generous plant of elevators. With the exception of the abnormal stress and strain of the holiday season, the vertical system of Macy's transportation is never very seriously taxed.

To those upper floors, also, go the folk whose purchases necessitate the fitting of something or other to the human frame. As we have just seen, shoes are upon the second floor. On the third is the women's wearing apparel, with special dressing-room facilities for trying on and fitting. Similar conveniences are to be found in the men's clothing department upon the fifth floor.

Rugs, upholstery and art objects generally require more time for selection than do shoes and socks, more room for display as well. They go, then, quite naturally to the broad s.p.a.ces of the fourth floor. The same qualities, only somewhat emphasized, apply to furniture, which is shown and sold upon the sixth. That the restaurant is relegated to the eighth floor is due in large part to the necessity for having cooking odors where they can be carried away without reaching other parts of the store; as well as to considerations in regard to the economy of floor s.p.a.ce for an enterprise that is active during only a part of the day.

Minor changes in the arrangement of all these departments are constantly and forever under way. A great market-place like Macy's never stays entirely put. Special considerations, special problems, unforeseen merchandising plans may at any moment make it not only advisable but necessary to change the location or the relative s.p.a.ce of any or all the departments. At Christmas-time the unusual pressure upon some of them, accompanied by a slacking in others--unfortunately (or fortunately?) shoppers cannot be everywhere and at the same moment--means many temporary changes--so one department must give some of its s.p.a.ce for a time to its neighbor--a debt possibly to be repaid at some other season of the year, when thoughts are not on toys, or candies or jewelry, but upon such serious things as carpets or refrigerators.

An interesting sidelight upon the intensive study that Macy's gives the psychology of its interior arrangements is furnished in the fact that, on the theory that the less deadly of the species has an inherent aversion to department-stores, men's furnishing goods in these emporiums should generally be displayed upon the main floor, and just as close to a street entrance as is possible. Macy's has been no exception to this rule. A man, even when he is in a mood for spending, wants it over with as soon as possible. He is impatient of the slightest delay. On the other hand, his wife or daughter will make of shopping a kind of ritual.

And, perhaps, because of that, she is often the more intelligent and discriminating buyer.

Today, however, s.p.a.ce on the main floor of the larger stores in New York is proving so valuable for goods that appeal to women shoppers, that some of them are trying to find a new method of appealing to the man-in-a-hurry. And so there has come to be a distinct trend toward putting men's goods upon a high upper floor, but with special express elevator service, so that their purchasers can get in and out with a minimum use of their valuable time.

That part of the organization of Macy's which always has, always has had, and always will have the chief visual appeal to the public, is the staff of sales people with whom it comes in constant contact. Again and again, as we come to consider the minute workings of this great machine of modern business, we shall find its human factor looming larger before our very noses. We can not dodge it. We have no desire to dodge it. In fact, we find it at all times the most fascinating feature of our study.

It is no part of this narrative to decide which part of the whole corps of workers in the store is the most important to it--it would be similar and quite as easy to try to give an opinion as to the relative importance of the mainspring and the balance-wheel of a watch--but it is enough to say here, as we shall say again and again, that the girl behind the counter--to say nothing of the man--is an absolutely indispensable feature. By her it rises; by her it might easily come tumbling down.

Let me ill.u.s.trate by the testimony of a young woman who recently was a girl behind the counter at Macy's:

"It surely is true," she says, "that we salespeople can do a great deal to increase the business and the number of customers. Some of these last are, of course, nearly hopeless--they would try the patience of Job, himself--and then again there are the others who are most appreciative of your services. It was interesting to me, when first I went behind the counter, to see how many of my customers would say 'thank you.' I found that nearly all of them will, if only you make a real effort to please them. And the majority of the Macy salesforce does try to help a customer in any way that she needs help. One day I observed this incident, which is almost typical: A customer approached our counter and put her bag down upon it. A saleswoman went to her at once, saying:

"'May I help you, madam?'

"The customer shook her head, a negative; she was merely trying to adjust her veil, she explained. But our saleswoman was resourceful in her tact.

"'Well, maybe, I can a.s.sist you with that,' she insisted, and straightway proceeded to do so. That was her notion of the service of our store."

It is incidents just like this--seemingly small when you take them apart and place them out by themselves--but in the aggregate very real and very important, that make for a store its lifelong customers. Let the young woman continue. Like a good many other young women in the store she is a college graduate and also possessed of a power for shrewd observation.

" ... One woman bought some gloves from me and while she waited for her change showed me her shopping-list. It was miles long, seemingly, and appeared to include everything from a safety-pin to a toy submarine. As she conned it, she said that she had shopped in Macy's for years, and nowhere else. In fact, I remember that she said that she would be completely lost in any other store.... Others came back, bringing a single glove that they had purchased a year or more before and wanting another pair just like them, they had been so satisfactory....

"Not all of them are quite so cheery, however. Occasionally some unreasonable and irate customer would appear, storming at having to wait a few precious moments for her change, or at not being able to find the same glove that her friend purchased the week before--the chances being quite good that her friend might have bought the glove in another store.

These are the times that test the wit and diplomacy and resource of the girl behind the counter.

"A day behind a counter is filled to the brim with experiences--you have your finger on the pulse of a part of the life of New York--you are a part of a huge and important organization, and you come into contact with the world in general. Even customers coming to our glove counter furnished us with interesting moments. One in particular came to me to get some of our children's woolen gloves. He was a robust old man--about fifty-five, I'd have said--but he told me he was sixty-nine. He said he had just bought the same gloves elsewhere for over twice as much. (I said I didn't doubt that in the least.) And then he went on to say his wife and daughters shopped in stores where the name meant a great deal, but that he always came to Macy's because he came for the merchandise he got. He ended by saying he was a happy man, with three romping grandchildren, that he daily handled over two thousand men, but couldn't handle one woman. I should like to see him try to run Macy's and have to handle some six thousand men and women."

The personnel of each of the selling floors of the store is under the direction of an organization captain, whose precise t.i.tle is floor superintendent. He has an understudy--or, as he is known in the parlance of the place, a relief--so that the floor is never, even for a minute, without an executive head.

This floor superintendent is a man of considerable discretionary powers.

He must be. These powers are being constantly brought into play as he is called upon to decide the merits of this or that customer's claim. He is a man of tact and judgment, both of which qualities are kept in constant operation. Upon his floor he is the direct representative of the management and so looks out for its interests. From his desk upon the floor headquarters he directs and supervises, yet he constantly circulates throughout his various departments and sees to it himself that the matters for which he is responsible are thoroughly carried out.

The orderliness of the floor is his special concern, and when, from time to time, it becomes necessary to shift salesclerks from one department to another--as in the case of the numberless special sales requiring extra help--it is he who engineers the details of the transfer.

Acting as lieutenants to the floor superintendents are the section managers, who, as we have already seen, were in the store of yesterday known as "floorwalkers." But in the Macy's of today something considerably different is meant from the superannuated and somewhat pompous gentleman who used to condescend, when we asked for the location of silverware, to wave us away with a cryptic "second-aisle-to-the-right-rear-of-the-store." It now means a live, up-to-date, agreeable gentleman, with a man's-size job to fill.

Not only must he ascertain the customers' needs and direct all of them, plainly and courteously, but he has direct supervision over all of the employees within his section. He is held responsible for their deportment and it is his duty to observe, as far as possible, their mental, moral and physical condition. He must be able to detect errors in the methods used by his salesclerks, and in order that he may be in a position to teach them correct methods, he must, himself, be master of the store system. Parts of this constantly are being changed, so that in addition to all of these other qualities, the successful section manager must possess an alert mind. The importance of his work may be visualized to some slight extent at least by the manual which is prepared for his guidance. This is a loose-leaf book of some fifty closely printed pages; the number varying according to the changes in the store system which are made from time to time. Just to give you a slight idea of what this captain of a merchandising army has upon his mind, consider that under the division ent.i.tled "Section Managers' Daily Duties" there are forty-six different items, and under "Miscellaneous Duties" thirteen.

Moreover, he must have at his instant command all the technical procedure regarding transactions and forms, refunds, complaints, transfers, employees' shopping, the Internal Revenue Law, accidents, and then some more. I submit this as a job requiring all that a man has of fort.i.tude and delicacy!

Salesmanship is the thing that really made R. H. Macy & Company and it therefore is patent that they should consider the actual sellers of their goods as the very backbone of their organization. In another place it is related how, in the department of training, employees are taught to sell, and in another something of the working out of the psychology of the customer and the salesclerk. Education counts. It helps to make the salesclerk a vital factor of the store organization.

Macy policy sees to it that the clerk is, in so far as it is possible, kept interested in his or her work. There are, as we have already begun to understand, as few rules governing their conduct, dress and liberties as are consistent with the smooth, economical operation of the business.

On the other hand, there is all possible encouragement for them to become familiar and even expert with the things that they sell. In many of the departments special booklets have been prepared as aids in selling the particular line of merchandise carried. That for the stationery department, for instance, covers: Paper, with its history from the earliest times, its manufacture, sizes and characteristics; engraving, with a full description of the processes connected therewith; fountain-pens and their manufacture; desk accessories, commercial stationery and the like. Ambition to excel in salesmanship is further stimulated by taking clerks through factories where their lines are made, and by exhibiting motion pictures of the manufacturing of these goods.

Here, then, is the store's most direct contact with its patrons. There are others, however, to be cla.s.sed as at least fairly direct. Take that big and comfortable restaurant up on the eighth floor. It is one of the real landmark's among eating-places of New York, a world city of good eating.

Its own magnitude may easily be guessed from the fact that in a single business day it feeds more people than almost if not any other in the town. Translated into cold figures this means that there is an average of twenty-five hundred lunches bought by customers each day that the store is open; with a maximum on extremely busy days reaching as high as five thousand. Figures are impressive. Yet these do not include either afternoon teas or late breakfasts for both of which there is a considerable clientele.

To serve these hungry folk who come to Macy's there are two hundred waitresses, buss-boys and other employees upon the floor, besides fifty in the general kitchen, twenty in the bakery and eight in the ice cream factory. And if you still try to doubt that this restaurant is not of itself a real business and one to be reckoned with, consider that in the course of an average year its patrons consume--among other things--two thousand barrels of flour, fifty-two tons of sugar, seven hundred and fifty thousand eggs, ninety-three thousand six hundred pounds of b.u.t.ter, two thousand bags of potatoes, and nearly half a million quarts of ice cream. This latter item, however, covers the ice cream used at the soda fountain and in the employees' and men's club restaurants.

The employees' lunchroom--conducted on the cafeteria plan--serves four thousand men and women each working day. It provides tasty and wholesome food at a cost that makes it entirely possible to eat to repletion for twenty cents or less. Soups, for instance, are three cents a portion, and meat dishes six, while other items, such as sandwiches, vegetables, desserts and the like are correspondingly low.

Nor is this luncheon the sole restaurant resource of the employees within this inst.i.tution. In the men's club nearly a thousand more of the Macy family eat their midday meal each day; and eat very well indeed.

Here the meal is served at a flat rate: at the uniform and moderate cost of thirty cents.

Under the same general management direction (the third a.s.sistant general manager) as the restaurant is the store's supply department--not different very much from the supply department of a big railroad or manufacturing unit--which supplies everything for its consumption, from coal to string; the manufacturing departments in which are produced gla.s.s, mattresses, printing, engraving, custom-made shirts, millinery, picture frames and paper novelties; the candy factory over near Tenth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street, which completely fills a big modern six-story building; the telephone service; and the so-called public service department.

These last facilities command our attention for a pa.s.sing moment. The telephone is, of course, the nerve-system of the Macy organization; nothing else. Its chief ganglion is a far-reaching switchboard on which little lights twinkle on and off and at which at a single relay sit nine competent operators in addition to a corps of inspectors and supervisors. The big board, from which run fifty-nine trunk-wires to the neighboring Fitzroy exchange, is none too large. Year in and year out it handles an average of nine thousand calls a day. And in the Christmas season this number easily is doubled and trebled.

The public service department means exactly what it is called. It is at the service of the public. In concrete form it is a free information bureau, where theater seats and railroad and Pullman tickets may be purchased at face value--and not one cent beyond, not even the usual moderate fifty-cent advance of the hotel agencies--where astute and marvelously informed young men and women, with a miniature library of reference books at their immediate command, stand ready and willing to answer all the reasonable questions that may be thrust at them. To it is added a postal office, a telegraph office and public telephones for both local and long distance service.

The third a.s.sistant general manager of the store also has within his bailiwick the important department of mail orders and adjustments.

Although in the technical sense of the word Macy's today has no mail order department--having been forced to abandon its once promising beginning along this line because of a sheer lack of room in which to handle it--the store each year actually receives thousands of orders for its goods by mail, from folk who, for one reason or another, find it inconvenient to visit it. These are received and systematically handled in this very department. Under its adjustment division comes the extremely interesting bureau of investigation, which concerns itself with all complaints, and the correspondence bureau, which handles more than ninety-five per cent. of the mail of the house.

It requires no particular keenness of imagination to see that, even with complaints reduced to a minimum and letter-writing and handling to a fine science, there is an infinite amount of detail in these two departments alone--detail that reaches into every part of the store and that necessitates a clever combination of system and diplomacy.