Busy Buyers

BOGALUSA, LA.--The Specialty Stores, Inc.: S. Bressler, jobs last Winter coats, Spring swagger suits; 1071 6th Ave. (Mdse. Reporting Co.)

BALTIMORE--S. Cans Co.; B. Wilfson, Sunday night party dresses; 450 7th Ave. (Lipshitz & Shapiro.)

BOSTON--R. H. White Co.; upstairs: Miss H. Gilchrist, underwear: J. Garabedian, rugs; basement; Miss S. Summer, millinery; M. Silverman close-outs, seconds, sportswear, knitwear, robes, cosmetics; 1440 Bway. (Assoc. Mdsg. Corp.)

Such commercial notices announcing the arrival of out-of-town buyers last week marched down column after column of the business pages of the august New York Times. In full swing and busier than usual was the autumn buying season. On the Times' front page appeared this headline: ARRIVAL OF BUYERS SETS 6-YEAR JULY RECORD. This fact the Times alone among all New York dailies was capable of proving because it is the only newspaper outside the trade which prints without charge buyers' listings. According to the Times, business was so active that no less than 4,181 buyers had registered in July, highest number since 1929. And the extraordinary influx of retailers' representatives seeking not only clothing for men, women & children but also jewelry, leather goods, draperies, toilet goods, toys, house furnishings, bedding, linen, fur coats, floor coverings, silverware, watches, stationery, continued to swell New York's population on into August.

Buyers who visit Manhattan are no longer hayseeds. Many are college graduates, nearly all read Vogue or Harper's Bazaar, keep up with Paris fashions. Their power over the trade is tremendous. They buy a good slice of the 53,000,000 dozen pairs of socks and stockings sold in the U. S. every six months. They account for perhaps 75% of all high-class women's clothes sold each season. Typical routine of a dress, hat and lingerie buyer from a department store in Atlanta, Ga.:

She is in her late 20's, plump, moderately pretty. Though it is her third trip to New York and she will not be taken in by the old trade wheeze about "going down to Canal Street to see the canal,"* she is excited, brings along too many clothes. She arrives in a long-sleeved black dress, finds the temperature 88DEG. The store allows her $8 a day and carfare. She registers at the Hotel McAlpin, convenient to the garment centre. After notifying the Times and the Women's Wear Daily of her arrival, she calls on her store's resident buyer, who is simply an agent employed to keep it abreast of style changes, make emergency purchases on request. At the resident buyer's office, the girl from Atlanta is assigned a small bare room with enough furniture for comfort but not enough to distract her from the business at hand. Already manufacturers' salesmen have begun to arrive. They line the corridor outside the buyer's office. Some are empty handed; others lug heavy sample cases. Office boys dart in & out carrying their cards. The salesman's object is to wheedle the buyer into visiting his firm's showroom. Such an excursion will never take her outside the area bounded by Seventh Avenue, Madison Avenue, 30th Street and 42nd Street. At the manufacturer's showrooms the buyer may spend a whole day in a booth inspecting dress goods, sometimes on live models. She generally visits four or five showrooms before placing her orders.

The buyer from Atlanta will stay in Manhattan from two to three weeks, buy anywhere from $2,000 to $15,000 worth of goods. In the evenings she is apt to go to the Hollywood Restaurant or to Leon & Eddie's with a young male buyer she has met at a merchandise fair, while her less comely comrades go to bed at 8 o'clock. Sometimes she will be taken to the theatre by someone who wants her trade. Ugly or pretty, every buyer is continually hounded by salesmen who pop up in hotel lobbies, deliver rousing sales talks by telephone and telegram.

Last week in Chicago the wholesale buying season for clothes and novelties sponsored by the Interstate Merchants Council came to a close. Orders were from 15% to 40% above last year.

In New York the common stock of Macy's, Best's, Allied Stores, Federated Department Stores and other retail houses broke into new high ground. In high good humor the National Retail Dry Goods Association, summarizing a round-robin of retail opinion, declared: "If the present forecasts for retailing in the fall of 1935 are in any way realized, we shall experience the best fall season since 1931."

* Manhattan's Canal Street has no canal.

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