Merchandise

“ Since ancient times, the sense of touch and the sensation of feel have been important factors in the buying and selling of practically all commodities. To see a piece of smooth satin partially sells a prospective customer, but to feel its soft texture in her fingers makes the luxury of the fabric a reality, something to own and cherish which will enhance her loveliness, and this hidden value, expressed in the sense of touch, is usually the factor which makes the customer buy better merchandise than she might have considered and which climaxes the sale. ”

“ The eager and designing looks they cast upon the arriero who is unloading a large bale of merchandise on the right, and the sympathetic glances they interchange with each other from time to time, sufficiently shew their appetite for plunder. They have a great variety of portable and saleable goods and meet with numerous and ready purchasers. ”

“ The customer of today is rightfully resentful of it, although it is true that some seem to react positively to it. Intelligent selling is marked by efficiency in fitting merchandise to a customer's desire and need, coupled with an understanding of her capacity to purchase without financial strain, and readiness to offer the best value commensurate with these limitations.
d. Convincing demonstration of the value of merchandise under consideration, even in cases where we are morally certain that there will be no immediate sale ”

“ Those brutes of keepers who beat you told me that at the first touch of the lash you gave a terrible jump the length of your chain. But, you see, friend Bull, if I offer you to the purchasers with the dangerous account which you give, I shall find few customers. An honest merchant should not boast his merchandise too much, no more should he underestimate it. ”

“ Demonstrate the value of all merchandise under serious consideration whether you believe it to be necessary or not.—Many sales of advertised articles or merchandise chosen on the basis of its decorative appeal can be closed without discussion of materials or construction. As a safety-first measure, these factors should be mentioned somewhat carefully after the order has been booked. Sometimes a customer will buy an article in complete good faith, and yet within the next half [Pg 32] hour will start shopping in other stores to see whether or not she has bought wisely. ”

“ The company store is elaborately stocked with commodities ranging from spices and spinning-wheels to hand-made laces. In this part of the world a wheel for twisting wool or linen thread is an every-day article of merchandise whose staple price is five dollars. ”

“ A great many manufacturers of various lines of merchandise, for the purpose of advertising their businesses and increasing the volume of their sales, inclose in the packages of their merchandise coupons and other premium tokens which entitle the purchaser of such merchandise to other articles of merchandise free of charge. ”

“ Merchandise is also divided into these three sorts,—navigation, by the which merchandizes are brought, and carried in and out over the seas; invection, by the which commodities are gathered into the city, and dispersed from thence into the country by land and negotiation, which I may call the keeping of a retailing or standing shop. In common speech, they of the first sort be called merchants, and both the other retailers.
Handicraftsmen be those which do exercise such arts as require both labour and cunning, as goldsmiths, tailors, and haberdashers, skinners, etc. ”

“ Every kind of merchandise is sold in a particular street or quarter assigned to it exclusively, and thus the best order is preserved. They sell everything by number or measure; at least, so far we have not observed them to sell anything by weight. ”

“ They may also sell small wares: victuals, fur, silk, coverchiefs [an item of woman's apparel] , silver wire, and gold wire in retail, but not cloth or wine. They must sell their goods within three months of arrival. Any alien bringing goods to the nation to sell must buy goods of the nation to the value of at least one-half that of his merchandise sold. These merchants must engage in no collusion to lower the price of merchandise bought, take merchandise bought to the staple, and promise to hold no staple beyond the sea for the same merchandise. ”

“ And whereas some of the aforesaid merchants deal in other merchandise as avoir-du-pois and other fine goods, such as cloths of Tars, silk, cendals and other diverse wares, and horses also and other animals, corn and other goods and merchandise which cannot easily be put at a fixed custom, the same merchants have granted to give us and our heirs on each pound of silver of the estimation or value of such goods and merchandise, by what name soever they be known, 3d. ”

“ For instance, should he say he sells gold, he must unobservedly touch some gold article—a piece of money, a gold ring, a breast-pin, or anything else of gold. Silk, cloth, linen, carpets, boots, glass, indeed any conceivable thing, may be articles of merchandise; the only thing to be remembered is that whatever is chosen must be touched. ”

“ But we can add to their desirability by explaining their aristocratic ancestry. Thousands of customers enjoy the sentimental satisfaction that comes with the knowledge of style and period sources and even the anecdote plays its part in giving merchandise its full measure of value in use. ”

“ A feature of this exposition which is likely to become of permanent and increasing utility to our industries is the collection of samples of merchandise produced in various countries with special reference to particular markets, providing practical object lessons to United States manufacturers as to qualities, styles, and prices of goods such as meet the special demands of consumers and may be exported with advantage. ”

“ In holding these Macy does not lay claim to originality, except perhaps in the amount of merchandising involved and the spectacularly low prices. Sales are in a large measure opportunities for the store as well as for the customer. It takes a goodly amount of merchandise from a manufacturer who for some reason offers a large concession in price and passes on its advantage to its customers. ”

“ The reader may find the catalogue of sale in the eighteenth of Revelation. Among the articles of merchandise are bodies, and souls of men. But the trade of these soul-merchants is fast falling into disrepute. ”

“ And this is to make a general stay that there may be no retailer occupy the feat of Merchant Adventurers, but only to keep him, and to live upon his retail; and likewise the Merchant Adventurer to occupy his feat only, and to touch no retail, for divers considerations of damage, as doth daily ensue thereof; and, for an example, the retailer comes over with the commodities of our realm, which, if a cannot sell them at his price, then a falls to bartering of them for silks and such like merchandise, and careth not to win by his cloth, for that a is sure to win by the retail of his silks. ”

“ Merchants set up shops supplied with merchandise such as was constantly arriving by vessel from England. Trained artisans were now available to do the work that every man had been hitherto obliged to perform for himself as best he could. ”

“ we become alternately merchants and merchandise, and we ask, not what a thing truly is, but what it costs; ”

“ Hence, in the merchandise by the sale of which it is to profit, it takes care to include staple articles which everybody needs, for example, salt, sugar, tobacco and beverages in universal and popular use. ”

“ Richard Aylesbury.—As to this, that no gold or silver comes into England, but that which is in England is carried beyond the sea, we maintain that if the merchandise which goes out of England be well and rightly governed, the money that is in England will remain and great plenty of money will come from beyond the sea, that is to say, let not more strange merchandise come within the realm than to the value of the denizen merchandise which passes out of the realm. ”

“ And if merchandise shall be imported, destined to be delivered in different districts or ports, the quantities and packages so destined to be delivered, shall be inserted in successive order in the manifest as aforesaid; and all spirits, wines and teas, constituting the whole or any part of the cargo of any vessel, shall also be inserted in successive orders distinguishing the ports to which the same may be destined, and the kinds, qualities and quantities thereof ”

“ On the contrary, the people in the southern unknown countries, being first of all very numerous, and living in a temperate climate, which requires clothing, and having no manufactures, or materials for manufactures, of their own, would consequently take off a very great quantity of English woollen manufactures, especially when civilized by our dwelling among them, and taught the manner of clothing themselves for their ease and convenience; and, in return for these manufactures, it is evident we should have gold in specie, and perhaps spices, the best merchandise and return in the world. ”

“ On all other goods, wares and merchandise, five per centum on the value thereof at the time and place of importation, except as follows: saltpetre, tin in pigs, tin plates, lead, old pewter, brass, iron and brass wire, copper in plates, [3] wool, cotton, dyeing woods and dyeing drugs, raw hides, beaver, and all other furs, and deer skins. ”

“ For a mercer to set up now in Paternoster Row, or a woollen-draper in St Paul's Churchyard, the one among the sempstresses, and the other among the chair-makers, would be the same thing as for a country shopkeeper not to set up in or near the market-place. [15]
The place, therefore, is to be prudently chosen by the retailer, when he first begins his business, that he may put himself in the way of business; and then, with God's blessing, and his own care, he may expect his share of trade with his neighbours. ”

“ When an article was wanted, it generally had to be hunted for, unless it chanced to fall under the immediate range of vision of salesman or customer, while the crowded shelves and counters presented a bewildering array of tinware, glassware, patent medicines, clocks, trimmed hats, churns, gaudy neckwear, cheap clothing, mock jewelry, hair-oils and colored perfumes put up in glass bottles of seductive shapes, along with sundry articles great and small necessary to the needs and adornment of the people of the surrounding country. ”

“ Merchandising, financing, transportation; each has played its own great part in the bringing of that silk sock upon your foot or the felt that you wear upon your head. Each has co-operated; each has correlated its effort. There are few accidents in modern business. Rule-o'-thumb has stepped out of its back-door. In its place have come cool calculation, steady planning, scientific investigation. If modern merchandising has tricks, these are they. And they are the tricks that win.
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In our last chapter we pictured R. H. Macy & Company as a machine of salesmanship. ”

“ There are various grades of merchants. They might be classed and symbolized according as they use a basket, a wheelbarrow, a cart, a stall, a booth, a shop, a warehouse, counting-room, or bank. Still all are the same thing—men who live by buying and selling. A ship is only a large basket, a warehouse, a costly stall. Your peddler is a small merchant going round from house to house with his basket to mediate between persons; your merchant only a great peddler sending round from land to land with his ships to mediate between nations. ”

“ He was in a mean shop, whose whole contents had been displayed in thick festoons, of jackets, shirts, and pantaloons, on the outside, where a man was pacing to and fro upon the pavement, whose vocation it was to accost and convert into a purchaser every passer-by who chanced even to look, at his goods. ”

“ Go into a store for a pair of gloves, even, mention the size you desire, and the salesman will show you every variety in kid, French dogskin, cloth, and leather; for soiree, promenade, driving, travelling, and every species of use, and different styles and kinds for each use. The salesmen understand their business, which is to sell goods; they are polite, they suggest wants, they humor your merest whim in hue, pattern, style, or fancy; they make no rude endeavor to force goods upon you, but are determined you shall have just what you want ”

“ Shops where the same kind of goods are sold are grouped in quarters by themselves. There is the street of the dealers in clothing, where the booths are bright with pink, blue, and orange silks, and with brocades of gold and silver, and where ladies, veiled and draped like phantoms, are posted. ”

“ The merchants never display their choicest wares on the shelves, but have them neatly tied up in boxes in an adjoining room. In some way you hint to your suave friend that you have shopped before, and are perfectly familiar with the peculiar tricks of the trade. All this he receives with an intelligent smile, and asks you to seat yourself. If you look around for a chair you will betray yourself as less experienced than you claim, so you had better68 drop at once on your heels; for by doing so, you will immediately gain a point in the good graces of your host. ”

“ Upon my life! it is worth the risk of transportation. Then, again, as a matter of calculation, my dear lad--I don't know what is the price of plate-glass now, but I am very sure that three or four thousand pounds would not buy the shop-front of that mercer. Who pays for it, sir?--who pays for it? Why, you, and I, and everybody who wants a silk handkerchief, a dozen of gloves, or a pair of silk stockings. ”