WINDOW TIOKETING.—A side issue of selling which is worth serious consideration is the value of the window ticket. Its use has been demon strated over and over again, and an intelligent use of this means of selling goods has only been made by a few traders. The word "window ticket" conveys to most retailers the means in common use of marking goods in the shop window, but much work can be done by extending this conception of the possibilities of the window ticket. Plainly-marked prices are common places of window display, and have been so for years, although too often even this simple work of ticketing prices is done with conspicuous crudeness and lack of taste. But the use of the window ticket to merely indicate prices is perhaps only the elementary beginning of work along these lines. Possibly the most conspicuous user of this means of selling goods is made by an American trader, Mr. Tom Murray, who has achieved considerable success as an outfitter. His window ticketing is so good that he has probably secured a greater success for this department of his work than he has as an individual trader. The Tom Murray window tickets are known throughout all the world to all students and observers of modern business methods. This trader's use of the window ticket is simplicity itself. He takes a sheet of paper, and in blue pencil scrawls on it a message to the passer-by. The secret of his success has'been the quality of his message. He happens to be a man of great individuality, with a power of expressing himself in that shrewd, terse, and somewhat quaint English which appeals to the American mind. In his way he is a philosopher who conveys his meaning through his window tickets, and some of the sayings that he has put in his window have a currency in America almost as great as more able thought expressed in conventional and dignified literary settings. With all his attractiveness as a writer, and the capable shrewdness of what he has to say, the American outfitter never misses realising the necessity for making his tickets carry a definite selling value. They not only appeal to the imagination of his public, and percolate through the country to a wider public still, but they do serve to self his goods. As a consequence, he has built up a big business as an outfitter, and in addition he is in great request to do the work that he has so successfully done in his own shop for others. He is not, of course, cited in this article as an example to follow, but simply as an indication of the possibilities in the direction of using the window to carry messages and suggestions to the customer. It is not given to every trader to have the peculiar gift which Mr. Murray has developed, nor is it given to the English trader to have a public so easily impressed ; but taken as an example of what has been done, the history of his rise should carry some facts of great suggestion to the trader in search of better methods.
Roughly speaking, the idea underlying this class of enterprise is the same idea which governs effective window display and all other forms of publicity. The main feature of an advertisement, whether it be a newspaper announce ment, a poster, or a window display, is to convey a definite suggestion to a possible buyer in such a form that it will be memorised and recur to him at intervals, and lead him finally to its adoption. Men who have studied the advertising problem soon realised that if a window ticket was capable of giving more than a suggestion of price, it could be made to count just as forcefully as a well-written advertisement. Such men, therefore, began to make their tickets carry a message, and their window ticketing became part and parcel of the general plan in their advertising campaign. One of the best illustrations of the work that has been done in this direction is found in the advertising conducted by a tailor who has several branch shops in London. The whole of his businesses have been virtually built up on the originality of his window tickets. He was not content to exhibit samples of materials to be made up in the shop, and to price them with the suit "fifty shillings," or whatever the value of the goods happened to be, but he began to use a ticket which conveyed an argument showing reasons why passers-by should purchase in his shop. For instance, one of his premises was situate almost
cheek by jowl with a huge tailoring establishment with a long window fronting and many hands employed inside. His establishment was a tiny shop, but a fraction of the bigger establishment, and only possessed a limited window space. Yet these obvious disadvantages proved a source of success when they were embodied in the strong campaign of window tickets. Each week the manager of this shop, in addition to the goods he showed and the ordinary price tickets, displayed cards of varying sizes, from about 5 inches by 3 inches to 12 inches by 8 inches, cleverly written, emphasising the fact that the smallness of the shop space and the lowness of the rent enabled him to give better value than the big shop further doyen the street. That this was supremely successful policy .is proved by the fact that it has been continued for years, and the business founded has rapidly extended, while the policy of window ticketing, started on such an aggressive note in the one shop, has been used, not necessarily to interpret similar facts, in all the other inserted without displacing the window dressing generally, and they could be changed daily, every other day, twice a week, or weekly, as the trader desired. Generally speaking, the oftener they are changed the better the effect produced. The line of talk would depend entirely on the business, but everything is grist to the mill in a case of constant changes of matter in this way. The passing event can be seized, emphasised, and applied to the business ; the changes of season can be forced to serve in the same way ; while the different policies connected with store conduct which it is necessary to explain—such questions as value, quality, workmanship, fit, and style— can also have their turn in a scheme of this kind. Given strong individu ality coupled with care to make each window ticket tell a part of the business story, and good results are bound to accrue to a popular business from these methods. It is worth noting that no extraordinary results can be expected from a week or a month of this kind of work. The effect successive window tickets produce is cumulative ; that is to say, the public get accustomed to expecting bright and pungent points on the window tickets, and in course of time begin to look for, appreciate, and talk about them.
Apart from the talking window ticket of this type, much good work can be done in a careful selection of even price tickets. One enterprising retailer, who makes a feature of colour schemes in his windows, studies every detail with a view to producing a good effect. He has specialised on the price ticket, and his boast is that his price ticket is the smallest in the city, and the advantage he finds in it is that the tickets are never obtrusive, and never clash with the carefully-thought-out schemes which are carried out in his windows. Then, again, certain drapers and costumiers vary the colours of their price tickets with the colours of their goods, and they find that even such a trivial detail as this is worth doing well. A firm of confectioners who have made themselves famous for artistic window dressing have made their window tickets artistic too, going to the length of having special designs drawn periodically, and having neat window tickets made by the printer from them. In these days there is no excuse for the trader who has up-to-date pretensions if he adopts the old method of cutting out a piece of indifferent cardboard and outlining the price in blue pencil. So many printers specialise in producing neat tickets, and the cost is so small, that slovenliness in the matter of price tickets is often considered to indicate a general slackness in the whole of the shop conduct.