[Leica] Leica] The Future of Film (B&H)

[msmall at aya.yale.edu (Marc James Small)]

At 10:41 PM 6/19/05 -0400, B. D. Colen wrote:
>But that's quite impractical when people are buying photo equipment that the
>merchant doesn't want stolen...so the basket system makes great sense....be
>shown what you're interested in; get a sales slip, and as you head for the
>register, the item begins its ride from the stockroom to the checkout
>counter....

Thank you, BD, but the same approach also works for small bottles of
perfume and the like.  The point I was making was a double one, and I am
sorry that the subtility of this passed you by:

a)  The US Retail Trade used this system between the 1880's and the 1920's,
and abandoned it.  Best Products used this system into the 1990's, and they
went belly-up, in large measure due to their manpower costs.  And

b)  There is nothing miraculous in B&H's basket system;  it was being used
by Macy's or whoever in 1910.  I enjoy a hearty regard for innovation, but
I find it distressing when the media, once again, has such a short memory
as to praise something as "new" when it is something adopted and discarded
long ago:  this indicates that many, if not most, journalists are
distressingly bereft of any knowledge of their nation, their people, and of
their history, social, industrial, political and scientific.

The reason that US retail stores went to allowing the folks to prowl the
shelves was a determined analysis that the cost of shop-lifting was less
than the cost of all the extra overhead in the fancy baskets or in the
counter help.  This became much greater after Roosevelt's "New Deal" came
in in the later 1930's, with a quck but cerain doubling of the actual cost
of employees due to government requirements, regulations, mandatory fees,
and all of this.  Most companies found it easier to reduce their workforce
than to fight the White House, and so the US retail industry then went over
to allowing the customers to prowl the place.  

I can go into any store in Roanoke and shop from the shelves.  I almost
certainly can do this in New York with the apparent exception of B&H, now
that the last Automat is done to death.  If B&H wishes to double its
workforce costs while not improving its performance, that is there
decision:  and a real journalist would want to know more about this and to
write a driving article about why a successful company adopts a most
decidedly negative retail approach.

Seriously, BD.  You MUST know some folks who can read or write, and some of
them MUST know an econ professor of some ability:  ask him or her about the
fiscal benefit of the "basket system" and I believe that you will see what
I mean, that it is a fine answer to the needs of the Art Deco era.

Marc
  
msmall@aya.yale.edu 
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