Chain store

“ While it is true that large department stores reap many of the advantages and employ many of the methods of a chain store group, such as large capital, buying in quantity, and the ability to command the highest type of management, it is nevertheless evident that, whereas a department store spreads its efforts over a number of different sorts of shops under one roof, the chain store owner concentrates its energy upon the conduct of but one kind of stores located in many neighborhoods. ”

“ In the chain-store system of merchandising we see the opposite extreme of coffee retailing. The wagon-route man features his delivery service; while in the chain-store plan, all customers must pay cash and carry home their parcels. Though the earliest established chain stores gave premiums, the practise has now been generally abandoned. ”

“ The chain-store men are organized in the National Chain Store Grocers Association, having thirty members, representing 12,000 stores, operating in eighteen states. It is estimated that there are fifty responsible chain-store grocery organizations in the United States, representing about 30,000 stores. The chain-store grocer turns his stock over from twelve to twenty-five times a year, sells for cash, makes no deliveries, and claims to save the consumer an average of fifteen percent in buying. ”

“ In a realistic sense, therefore, most chain store organizations are merchandising institutions of a hybrid retail-wholesale nature. They possess the essential characteristics of both the retailer and the wholesaler. Their wholesale functions, which are integrated with but are physically distinct from their retail functions, are performed through their warehouses and central offices. That fact is the essential key to the problem presented by this case. It serves to make clear the inapplicability of Section 13 (a) (2) to petitioner's warehouse and central office employees. ”

“ Obviously a corporation owning a chain of several hundred stores and working, like the manufacturer, with borrowed capital, is stronger than any one retailer to bargain with the powerful producers, and as the chain-store tends to displace the little retailer a balance is restored between the business of production and the business of retailing. ”

“ There's real horse sense at the back of every move they take. They don't guess at things. They find out. If you were to ask me what accounts for the big success of chain-store organizations I should say that it is that the chain-store organization knows what it is doing, while the ordinary retailer guesses at what he is doing. ”

“ A warehouse and a central office such as petitioner maintains are vital factors in this integration of the retail and wholesale functions. They are necessary instruments for the successful performance of the wholesale aspects of a multi-function business of this type.
There are, to be sure, certain distinctions between the wholesale activities of a chain store system and those of an independent wholesaler. Thus a chain store enterprise does not customarily sell merchandise in its warehouse to retailers or other wholesale customers as does an independent wholesaler. ”

“ The abilit of the chain stores to make large quantity purchases; to pay cash and thus obtain the advantage of discounts; skill in buying so as to avoid either overstocking or understocking; warehousing in, and distribution from, a single warehouse for numerous stores; large capital with the advantages flowing therefrom; certain pricing and sales policies resulting in slightly lower prices on the part of the chain stores as compared with single stores; more rapid turnover of goods; cheaper and better advertising; superior management ”

“ A little bake shop in Chicago competes successfully to-day with a great chain-store company that has an immense establishment directly across the street. The shop sells as its leaders home-made English tarts that no chain-store could supply. ”

“ The rapid development of chain-store systems under single ownership and control is almost certain to accelerate the growth of this kind of coöperation of retailers in their buying activities. From the other end of the distributive chain efforts are being made to unite consumers in the ownership and control of retailing and even wholesaling establishments. Coöperative stores have had a most successful development in Europe but have not done well in America. In the United States there have been successive waves of interest in coöperation. ”

“ With respect to associations of individual stores for purposes of co-operative buying, exchange of ideas as to advertising, sales methods, etc., it need only be remarked that these are voluntary groups, and that series of independent units cannot, in the nature of things, be as efficiently and successfully integrated as a chain under a single ownership and management.
But the appellee in proof and argument drew a comparison between the chain store and the department store which he insists exhibits the classification of the statute as illusory and arbitrary. ”

“ Many a soldier waited in the darkness for the perilous moment to go "over the top," with his eyes fixed upon the luminous hands and figures of his Ingersoll Radiolite.
Factory facilities producing an average of twenty thousand accurate watches a day; distribution facilities including the cooperation of a voluntary "chain-store system" [217] of more than one hundred thousand independent retailers, all operating upon a common plan and under common prices ”

“ While the ownership of a single retail or wholesale store resting in an individual, or in a partnership composed of individuals who make this business their means of livelihood, or in a group of investors in the form of a corporation, may be considered the normal unit, gradual integration is going on both from the producers' and consumers' ends of the distribution chain. ”

“ Therefore, if foods of the same quality are not lower in price in chain stores, it must be because the buying is not well done or a greater profit is made in selling them. In addition, chain stores generally require cash for all purchases made in them and they do not usually deliver goods. ”

“ Among the mighty store of wonderful chains that are for ever forging, day and night, in the vast iron-works of time and circumstance, there was one chain forged in the moment of that small conclusion, riveted to the foundations of heaven and earth, and gifted with invincible force to hold and drag. ”

“ Into the quiet of his office filtered a hum of activity exquisite to his ears, the clicking of billing-machines, the whirr of parcel-carriers, the sound of customers’ voices, buying merchandise. Out there the store was smoothly functioning, supplying modern civilization to ten thousand men and women. And it was his store! Not only did he reap the profit—that was a small part of his pleasure. It was his personality which gave all those people the opportunity to satisfy their needs, that was educating them to desire better things. ”

“ The center shelving will always have stock boxes piled on top and that will throw one side of the store always in shadow. Besides, this arrangement divides the trade and screens half of it from view.
“The stock is cut in two and looks small.
“One salesman can not wait on the furnishing goods trade without neglecting half of it all the time. If you have two clerks, a customer must be taken from one side to the other for his ties or underwear, and there you are again, both on one side at the same time. ”

“ Here, then, is the receiving department of this great single retailing machine of modern business. It keeps over three hundred human units constantly upon the move—and, mind you, all that these people are doing is merely making the merchandise ready to sell. The next step is the final one before actual sale; the display of proffered goods—upon the counters and within the plate-glass windows along the street frontages.
This, in the modern department-store, is considered a feature of the utmost importance, and nowhere more so than at Macy's. ”

“ In Jacksonville, Fla., there are not less than six hardware stores located in one block. That town of sixty thousand people has several good business streets, but this group of stores has become known as 'The Hard [Pg 233] ware Center' and people gravitate there for anything they want in the hardware line. Those stores benefit by being together. The same thing applies in a smaller way to a street of stores. One store by itself doesn't impel the buying instinct, but a street of stores puts the thought of buying into the minds of people passing them. ”

“ Stucker, with your stock under the tables, and the check you will get will help buy New Way sectional shelving that will give you about three times the capacity your furnishing department has now; so it will not be necessary to climb to the ceiling for your active stock or dig under the tables for your out of season goods.
“Before we discuss detail, Mr. Lambert,” continued the salesman, “I have something to say about the practical arrangement of the inside of the store.
“The business of a store is to sell goods. ”

“ Dozens, hundreds, perhaps a [Pg 103] thousand or more shoppers still are left within the store. Each is to be accorded a full opportunity to finish his or her transactions. There is no hurry; no ostensible hurry, at any rate. It would not be good-breeding to hasten the customer upon his way. And a canon of good merchandising is good breeding.
Gradually, however, the late-stayers eliminate themselves. The big doors open to let them out, but never again this day to let newcomers in. No rule of the house is observed more inexorably. And so gradually the store empties itself. ”

“ Perhaps when we make use of the term ‘Brokers’ Shop,’ the minds of our readers will at once picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long perspective of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood chiffoniers, and mahogany wash-hand-stands, with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings, and an appropriate foreground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that we mean an humble class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed almost entirely of brokers’ shops ”

“ At the beginning we can make assertion that in the entire history of retail selling no more ingenious scheme has been devised for the orderly and rapid movement of goods in and out of a department-store. ”

“ The worthy couple then climb into their Cape cart, or spring wagon, and drive off home, where they vegetate until the low condition of the domestic stores compels them again to visit the store, or until a Nachtmaal is announced at the nearest church. The profits of such a store are very large, and, as a rule, amply sufficient to compensate the proprietor, often a man who has received his business training in a large wholesale house in England or Germany, for his eight or nine years of exile. ”

“ One of the most promising fields for American business enterprise I believe to be the organization of retail distribution, which, among other economies, can rid itself of the expense of solicitation. We have already great bazaars which combine the variety of a country store by assembling under one roof the special departments of ordinary city warehouses: is it not possible to organize for such marts stated circles of customers, on whose steady trade the proprietors can rely—circles sufficiently large for adequate support, independently of showy premises or other advertisement? ”

“ The plate glass windows of every store lay in thousands of pieces below their sashes, and the entire stock of merchandise whether furniture or drapery, groceries or dairy products, had been hurled through them into the middle of the thoroughfare. Above these were piled pell-mell bedding and chairs, wardrobes and wash basins, all splintered and broken—the whole making the most pitiable conglomeration I ever hope to witness. ”

“ Almost equally obvious it is, too, that the store, no matter how carefully and fore-visionedly and scientifically its buyers may plan, cannot always dispose of its merchandise at precisely the same rate at which it comes underneath its roof. It cannot afford to gain a reputation for not carrying in stock the items either that it advertises for sale or that it has educated its patrons to expect upon its counters. Which means that alongside of and intertwined with the orderly business of merchandise reception there must be warehousing—reservoir facilities, if you please. ”

“ My line is a specialty line—only fine goods—and I'll bring in a small bunch of samples tonight about the time you close up.' Merchants like to deal with a man who is strictly business when they both get to doing business. Then is the time to put friendship and joking on the shelf.
"That night at ten o'clock I was back at the store with a bundle under my arm. The man who is too proud to carry a bundle once in a while would better never start on the road. The proprietor whispered to the hat buyer—I overheard the words—'Large Eastern factory'—and together they began to look at my samples. ”

“ That is why one can decide quickly, and never need visit two stores."
"And is this merely a sample store? I see no clerks cutting off goods or marking bundles."
"All our stores are sample stores, except as to a few classes of articles. The goods, with these exceptions, are all at the great central warehouse of the city, to which they are shipped directly from the producers. We order from the sample and the printed statement of texture, make, and qualities. The orders are sent to the warehouse, and the goods distributed from there." ”