Consumers are statistics. Customers are people.
Stanley Marcus
As goods become more standardized - and mass production has that effect, standardizing product - the distinguishing factor between one store and another is going to be how skillful stores are in satisfying customers and making it a pleasant experience instead of a hostile experience.
The department store was a product of the 19th century and became a very important institution as America went into the 20th century. It provided show places in developing towns like Terre Haute, Sacramento, and Dallas.
You have to empower your sales staff to use their judgment and go beyond the standards set down on paper and by the computer.
What we learned was that the collective glamour of a specialty store could sell a lot of merchandise.
Seeing so much of the same thing suppresses the desire to buy.
Textiles embody all the dimensions of art: color, innovation, talent.
I thought it was unfair to ask school kids to integrate first. The parents should lead the way, not send out the children as advance troops.
Owners of valuable works of art don't give to institutions that don't provide good air conditioning and have good shows.
Make life exciting, and you live longer.
Running those poor steers back and forth in the heat is ridiculous. What they ought to do is put the steers in the convention hall and run the delegates.
I went into a Beverly Hills shop to buy an attache case. They had 250 cases on their shelves. I asked an attractive saleswoman if they carried one made of belting leather. She said 'no.' That was the end of the conversation. She made no attempt to show me another case that would provide equal service. I didn't buy an attache case.
Deciding taste is egotistical, but that's how taste is established, by somebody having the courage to say, 'I don't want to sell that.'
I love to sell, to visualize something for someone and make them see it.
I saw an ad for an expensive car and got so excited about it, I called the dealer. 'How are those new cars?' I asked. 'They're fine,' he said. I thought he'd offer to let me drive it for a weekend. He didn't. I expected a salesman to call. No one did. I didn't buy the car.
If you demand the best, sometimes you get it.
Other than things like toothpaste, I don't buy anything that isn't sold to me.
I thought: 'It would be great to create a series of clothes that looked like that tree.' Clothes that gave you the green of the leaf and the warm brown of the underside of that leaf and the vanilla colored blossom.
Maybe it's my age that makes me very conscious of loose threads, but I don't think that's an earmark of a fine product. And whenever I have a deep-seated feeling like that, I convey it to the person who made it. Sometimes they curse me, and sometimes they thank me.
I'm lucky that I was in retailing during the time that I call the golden age of retailing.
It ought to be self-evident common sense that service is important to sales. But it's not.
If the salesperson is busy, he or she should nod and say 'I'll be with you in a few moments,' so the customer won't mind waiting.
It was at the department store where people got away from provincialism.
I'd like to put together a think tank of people - economists, futurists, city planners, a few department-store people - to discuss reinventing the department store.
Running a fashion business takes the heart of a good gambler. You're always dealing with new things. And there's no guarantee that anything new is going to be successful.
I took to heart the instructions my father drilled into my head. Respect the customer. Pay attention to her. Take her package to her car. You broke your neck to get what she wanted because you never knew when the next customer would come along.
There's a right way to sell and a wrong way to sell.
I already own more than any human being needs.
Designers may find the fashion business can shrivel up.
I suspect that most retailers are so busy buying goods, taking care of markdowns, and so on that they have too little time to give thought to creativity.
Since merchandise creativity is hampered by the reluctance of manufacturers to do special things for an individual store, it might be well to increase purchases in foreign markets more able to accept innovative ideas.
