The Man Behind The Brand: At The Store
By Doug Gelbert
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About this ebook
Open a copy of the Information Please Almanac and turn to the chapter on famous people. 4000 names and you won't know hardly any. But what about names everyone knows? Pillsbury, Maytag, Kellogg. Nowhere to be found. How many names are more famous than Howard Johnson or Oscar Mayer? But who were these folks? Let’s look at the men behind the names where we shop.
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The Man Behind The Brand - Doug Gelbert
The Man Behind The Brand – At the Store
by Doug Gelbert
published by Cruden Bay Books at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 by Cruden Bay Books
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Open a copy of the Information Please Almanac and turn to the chapter on famous people. 4000 names and you won't know hardly any. But what about names everyone knows? Pillsbury, Kraft, Maytag, Hertz, Kellogg, Gerber. Nowhere to be found. How many names are more famous than Howard Johnson? Milton Bradley? Oscar Mayer? But who were these folks? Let’s take a look at the men behind the names where we shop...
Bloomingdale's
Eckerd's
Hallmark
Hudson's
Kresge's
Kroger's
Levitz
Macy's
Marshall Field
Montgomery Ward's
J.C. Penney's
Sears and Roebuck
Spiegel's
Tiffany's
Wanamaker's
And the man behind the brand is...
Lyman Bloomingdale
Lyman Bloomingdale loved store windows. He rented his first store, with his brother Joseph, in 1872 far from fashionable Union Square in New York's depressed upper East Side. The building was only 20 feet wide by 70 feet deep but it had two large, perfect plate glass windows.
Lyman set out to create exciting showcases in his windows while Joseph looked after the books. He believed that storefront windows were wasted if all they did was show merchandise. Bloomingdale's windows would be silent stages with eye-catching panoramas to lure curious customers inside.
Bloomingdale saw more in his location than attractive windows. He knew the city of New York had purchased a huge tract of land on the East Side and was developing a fresh, green haven to be called Central Park. New Yorkers would soon migrate to his location at the future park's southern tip Bloomingdale figured.
The Bloomingdale family had a history of being on the cutting edge in New York. With his father, Lyman had operated Bloomingdale's Hoop Skirt and Ladies Notion Shop to keep New York women in step with high European fashion prior to the Civil War. Joseph was a successful traveling salesman, taking hoop skirts as far as California.
First day sales were only $3.68. But one month later the brothers knocked down the storeroom partition to provide more selling room. The Panic of 1873 caused a shift in merchandising philosophy to the best value at the lowest prices. Lyman Bloomingdale created the 19th Ward Gazette, a free paper that supplemented his regular advertisements. The paper provided light news and features in depressed times, binding the store to the community.
Meanwhile New Yorkers migrated towards Central Park. Railroads developed and soon Bloomingdale's marked the epicenter of Manhattan's web of mass transit routes. Lyman set out to let the world know that All cars transfer to Bloomingdale's.
He placed the phrase on placards in New York's trolleys,
in his ads and on his horse drawn delivery cars. A patron of the arts, he commissioned scenic European paintings on his exterior store walls.
By 1880 Bloomingdale's had grown into a five-story building - a department store with plenty of show windows. Lyman took out full page newspaper ads to draw people into the store. Once inside employees demonstrated new products. He had a young woman read from popular