Can I Help You, Madam? The Autobiography of fashion buyer, Ethyle Campbell

CHAPTER I

KEEPING THE WHOLESALERS AT BAY

Only when they have read this will my late employers realise just how green I was when they first entrusted me, as one of their buyers, with some thousands of pounds of their good money to spend.

Poets, we are told, are born and not made. Buyers, I am inclined to believe, if they are to put imagination into their buying, must have a flair, which experience alone will not bring. And the best experience for a buyer is selling. That is where I was lucky, or perhaps unlucky. A certain gift of brazen assurance enabled me to step into one of the plums of the rag trade with considerably less actual experience than most of the girls under me. And if you don’t happen to know what the rag trade is—it is anything and everything to do with women’s clothes.

Eighteen months before becoming a rag buyer I was buying concrete mixers, steel girders and door-knobs from an engineering office in Victoria Street. Even my concrete mixer job was forced upon me. I thought a six weeks’ evening course of shorthand and typewriting would not do me any harm, so I took the course. Shorthand was an abomination to me. It proved useful, but I had such a peculiar system of shorthanding shorthand that no one in the world but myself could have understood my notes.

I went off to Nice for a holiday, and, whilst I was there, along came a note from a girl who had also been struggling with shorthand: Please see me immediately you get back. Recalled by my father to Jamaica. Promised to help a man in Victoria Street. Will you go for a fortnight for me as I don’t want to let him down?

Well, I decided to help him out for a week until he got proper assistance. I stayed there for five years.

The first thing he dictated to me was an enquiry as to the price of pulleys. I had never heard of them, and promptly put pullies. Another item was three-way blocks—I put three weigh; and when it came to grub screws and .001 platinum, I began to think I was going bats.

I grew to love the job, and it was my humble signature which made one of the world’s greatest catering firms enthusiastic users of stainless steel. It was also my humble signature which went out at the foot of an order for one ton of tin-tacks. The word should have been tin.

It seems a far cry from buying concrete mixers in Victoria Street to buying women’s clothing in Bond Street. I thought then, however, and still think, that the principles underlying the buying of concrete mixers and clothes are much the same. The guiding star of any business is buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, and, although I spent the intervening eighteen months dodging about on the fringe of the rag trade, I learned nothing but the patter of the latter. My concrete mixer days were the days which fitted me to take my place in the more appropriately feminine world of Bond Street.

The technique of those who sell concrete mixers differs little from that of the caterers to woman’s fashion and beauty. Perhaps the latter are a trifle more pushing and versatile in their approach, but then there are more of them, and competition is just that much keener.

In Victoria Street they used to tell me that I only had to sign the bill at the Hotel Cecil and I should never see it again. In Bond Street the same hook was usually baited with the Berkeley. The concrete mixer merchants would leave behind them tickets for some Edwardian revival, or ask me to meet their wives. The male sirens of Bond Street would babble artlessly of orchids and the latest musical hit. Their wives were in business with them, so I met them anyway. In my heart I think I had a sneaking preference for the inexperience of the concrete mixer merchant. It is natural that Bond Street and its environs should be smoother, sleeker, suaver than Victoria Street, where the atmosphere is more rugged and masculine.

I am out of the rag trade now, and can afford to be a little indiscreet, but I am afraid that when my late employers—kind, straight and charming people—read this, they will have an attack of the shivers at the slender equipment I brought to them.

You are badly understocked, they said to me on the day I took over their sportswear department. Go out and spend five thousand pounds. Just like that.

It was a bright spring morning. I was born under the sign of Leo, which demands the sun for its children. The sun gave me courage that morning. I needed it.

Word had gone out before me that, like manna from heaven, a nice, simple, mug buyer was going the rounds. From north of Oxford Street to Hanover Square they were waiting for me. From almost forgotten corners of their stockrooms they dragged out their duds.

Some of the wholesalers I already knew. They preened themselves, grasped my hand with the firm grip of sincerity and wished me luck, offering to do what we can for you. Most of them meant do you for what we can. But there were others, and to them I shall always be grateful for the help they gave me in those first critical days.

The travellers were queued up in my office that first morning. It was impossible to see them all, so I saw none, preferring to visit their own showrooms.

For me the next few days were a nightmare of parading mannequins, salesmen’s wiles and gnawing doubts. The first firm I called upon was horrified at the smallness of my order. Your predecessor never ordered less than a dozen of each colour, protested the proprietor, trying to make me small and the order larger. And she lost her job, I replied pointedly, as I swept out.

The next firm was on the look-out for me—very obviously so. Hardly had I crossed the threshold when I was seized firmly and led to a rail of garments set apart from all the others.

These are absolutely your type, said a smiling Jew with a flat, oily face rather like a kipper.

I found myself looking at some thirty knitted suits, occasionally glancing at his over-polished shoes.

I should only take a few reds, the Kipper said confidently and easily. Go easy on the greens, too, but plonk for the blues. It’s a blue season and you can’t go wrong. Take plenty of the dark and light blues.

I disliked both his manners and his staccato voice. More than all I resented his assumption of owning me. The implication was that I was green and unable to choose for myself.

Am I to understand that this is your entire collection, Mr. Cohenstein? I heard myself saying in a rather superior tone. I had been aware previously that his collection numbered some three hundred pieces.

Good gracious, no! said the Kipper. But I have picked out the only numbers you must order.

I would like to see your whole collection, please, I retorted, taking off my gloves and sitting myself at a table.

It had still not dawned upon the man that I resented his attitude. He merely thought I was a little mad, and probably a bad buyer into the bargain. There followed frenzied whispers behind screens.

Will you have some coffee while the mannequins are getting ready? The Kipper smiled ingratiatingly.

We had coffee. The collection ran into hundreds of garments. The morning passed as one long procession of mannequins. Lunch-time came and went. Pressed to lunch with them, I did—two pickled cucumbers.

Despite an effort to be open-minded and fair with this firm, I did not trust them, and, although under great pressure, my order was a small one. My intuition later turned out to have been well founded, for, when the garments were delivered, they were made up in inferior, substituted materials. Over subsequent years the Kipper, with whom I continued to do business, tried hard to restore my confidence, but I believe I never gave him a chance to put another one over me.

It was five o’clock on that first day when I returned to my desk to find a wholesaler, full of bounce, sitting there with a dozen suits over his arm. It was a rule of the house that wholesalers were only allowed on the premises before eleven in the morning and after five in the afternoon.

I’m O’Hara. He introduced himself with aplomb. I expect you know how well our stuff sells here. You’ll want about a dozen of these suits a day.

I resented his manner, but I could not afford to let my judgment be clouded by exteriors. If one bought on that principle, I regret to say that the entire rag trade would be in the hands of a very small number of wholesalers.

Is it a fact that these suits sell so well? I asked my head sales girl.

Yes! she replied rather sulkily, without giving me any further information and making it perfectly clear that I was going to get no help in that direction. She had believed, prior to my appointment, that she was to become buyer for the department. I made a mental note to find everything out without referring to her in any detail. It worked; and before very long our relations were upon a much happier plane.

O’Hara’s suits went on selling just as well as he had said they would.

Keeping the wholesalers at bay would be a good subtitle to describe the next few months of my life. Word quickly got around the trade that I was tough, with the result that the wholesalers, with singularly little originality about them, set to work doggedly to break down sales resistance.

I feel it is only fair to the rag trade as a whole to explain here that fully three-quarters of the wholesalers made no sort of improper approach to me then or at any other time. That I give so much prominence to the other quarter is due to the deep and lasting impression that was made upon me. The old established firms are perfectly straight in all matters, and their methods are above criticism. I would go so far as to say, despite popular belief to the contrary, that their business ethics are as high as those of a cross-section taken of any other important trade in the country.

I was a bit of a puzzle to them, I suppose, as soon as my verdance became a little toned down. Offers of expensive lunches, dinners, suppers, and entertainments, with or without my would-be hosts, fairly rained in on me. Orchids and other exotic flowers, strawberries out of season, fabulously expensive chocolates, and every other conceivable kind of bait, were wont to arrive discreetly at my flat. The most lavish of these presentations was a huge cardboard box, stuffed with layers of wet cotton wool, and between each layer rows of the most gorgeous white camellias I have ever seen. In all there were a gross.

I did not send back these flowers, but I always took great care to acknowledge them quite noncommittally, and assure the senders that their extravagant gifts were only embarrassing to me. The flowers I kept—some at home and some on my desk. The other gifts created a problem which required all my tact to handle, but flowers I could not bring myself to return.

When it became apparent that I was proof against such blandishment, the approaches were renewed on other lines. In the most casually innocent fashion, as though by the merest accident, wholesalers would fall into step beside me. In a faintly apologetic tone they would announce that they could of course cover you for ten per cent of all your orders.

One of the fraternity, note-book in hand and looking most businesslike, once stood at my desk and remarked: There remains only to decide the matter of your percentage. Most buyers take five per cent, but we will arrange what is most convenient to you, and prices can be scaled accordingly.

He looked pained and incredulous when I requested him to take his offers elsewhere. Furthermore, I told him that I did not believe the taking of bribes was as common among buyers as he would have led me to believe. In the good old days there is no doubt that a great number of illicit commissions were paid, but the scandal assumed such proportions that the system was tightened up all round. The management of big firms established direct relations with wholesalers and soon got to know of any funny business.

Probably the culminating point was reached when the buyer for one of the great organisations furnished a luxurious flat in every detail with Christmas presents from wholesalers.

This buyer’s demands, however, became so absurd that she met her Waterloo. A wholesaler called upon her a few days before Christmas and asked her what she would like for Christmas.

My flat is complete now, she replied coyly, except for a grand piano.

Very well! replied the wholesaler grimly, you shall have a grand piano. Forthwith he went down to the piano department of the same organisation and ordered a handsome grand piano to be sent to her. As he had anticipated, the unusual nature of the occurrence came to the ears of the directors. Despite a magnificent record as a buyer, the lady was requested to leave. She had received her last Christmas present.

As I say, things were considerably tightened, and the relations between the directors of the retail firms and their wholesale suppliers became so close that to-day a buyer for a reputable concern who demanded a rake-off would not last a month. The best wholesale houses would go straight to the fountain head and scotch the demand before it went any further. But wholesalers still conveniently forget to send invoices for frocks which buyers order to wear themselves.

In any event, there are plenty of other reasons to-day why buyers are not on the make. Competition in the rag trade is terrific, and prices are therefore close. There is literally not enough margin for such arrangements. Manufacturers of garments make them to a retail selling price. Competitive retailers operate within the same price range, and a buyer would soon be called to account for her actions.

I suppose it was some six months or more before the wholesalers reached the conclusion that I had not got my hand out, and my relations with them were governed by the ordinary laws of supply and demand.

In common with the practice of the trade, I used to accept gifts at Christmas time. I did try to discourage it, though, and make the donors realise that it did not influence me. Many of these people, as the years passed, became very good friends whom I could always meet upon a basis of complete frankness.

It became a standing joke that even these small Christmas presents were scaled according to the volume of buying done from these firms during the preceding twelve months. One year I received from a firm a large bottle of Nuit de Noël perfume. The following year my orders dropped to about one-half—so did the size of the bottle of Nuit de Noël.

My difficulties with the wholesalers settled, I found plenty of potential trouble in my department. I was a bit of a mystery with the girls. I had not come from some other great store with a flourish of trumpets; I was a completely unknown quantity. The girls would have been easier in their minds about me if they had been able to get in touch with girls from some other store and make enquiries about me.

It would not be true, with one exception, to say that I met with actual hostility from the girls. Their attitude was really non-committal. Apart from small jealousies and other personal feelings, they were anxious about my buying capacities. They were paid on commission, and bad buying on my part would have had a disastrous effect upon their earnings. Their anxiety and curiosity about me was understandable.

They did not really accept me until, some months after I had joined them, I placed a very large order for some sports suits against the advice of more experienced people. These went like the proverbial hot cakes, and some record commissions were earned by the girls of my department.

My first real faux pas consisted in treading upon the toes of another department. You have to live in that world to realise what a crime this is. I was allowed to sell three-piece suits, but it had been hinted broadly to me that I had better keep to jackets and skirts. Customers wanting blouses to complete their ensembles could be sent to the blouse department.

Now, customers hate doing this. I don’t blame them. Why should they concern themselves with the internal arrangements and petty jealousies inevitable in a large organisation?

It all seemed absurd to me, so I went in heavily—very heavily—for some three-piece suits, complete with silk blouses. They were an immediate success. I was correspondingly cock-a-hoop.

Down went the figures in the blouse department. The buyer there retaliated by having silk suits in her department.

There was a grand and glorious row, in which I foolishly took the offensive. The blouse buyer wiped the floor with me.

In the long run it was an advantage, for it cleared the air, and peace was declared when the management sent down detailed lists specifying what each department might sell. The upshot was that I could sell blouses with three-piece suits, but not blouses alone. It was very awkward when a customer wanted a blouse like the one shown with a three-piece suit, and we had to send her, protesting, to the blouse department. I called it playing at shops, but after a while I got used to the system and realised the wisdom which lay behind it.

It sounds contradictory, but it is a fact that a good buyer must watch the selling and the buying will look after itself. I got to work sorting out the selling end, and none too soon.

The saleswoman system is much the same in all stores. The girls work on a salary and commission basis. The best saleswoman is called the first sales and takes precedence over the other girls. Whenever she is not serving and a customer comes in, that customer is hers. If customers come in all day, one at a time, she is lucky, for she serves one after the other. The other girls stand by hoping the first won’t have finished before the next customer arrives. It is a perfectly fair system. The best saleswoman gets the most customers. It is good for the store, the customer and the saleswoman. It seems a bit hard, however, on the other ambitious sales girls in the department. It is awful to stand by watching someone else serve, when you are itching to make a show yourself.

Two of my girls had started as lift operators in the firm. Then they had come into the department to help during busy times. Other times saw them volunteering to settle queries for busy saleswomen. They graduated into the department. Both were delighted at the chance of becoming sales girls, and both were terribly eager to prove what they could do.

Another girl of mine—a junior—was so excited the first time she sold anything, that she practically fainted from sheer delight. She had to have a glass of water to pull her round.

The following story gives you a slight idea of the keenness of these shop girls, as you are wont to call them.

Sanking was first sales and Trigg was runner-up. They hated one another. I could not make up my mind which of them was the better saleswoman.

We are going to have ‘open sales’ next week, I announced on this particular Black Friday, determined to have the matter settled. You will all have an equal chance and we shall see who is the best saleswoman.

Sanking looked thunderous. Trigg was confident and triumphant. Her high heels seemed even higher than before.

I lunched well that day at Sovrani’s and came back to the store feeling pretty good. The chief accountant was lolling by my desk.

I hope I haven’t kept you waiting, I greeted him cheerily.

I’m not waiting, he retorted grimly, but watching.

Gosh, shoplifters? I queried. I hope nothing’s gone while I’ve been away.

Shoplifters my hat, he replied rudely. What’s all this business about ‘open sales’?

I was livid at this interference.

I fail to understand you, Mr. Boyce, I said, with an air of cold superiority.

I would have given anything at that moment to have been able to powder my nose. Every time I moved my eyes I could see the shining tip of my nose, and my face felt on fire, partly from temper and partly from an excessively good lunch.

Why have you arranged that Miss Sanking will not be ‘first sales’ next week? What’s the big idea? It seems preposterous to me.

I could have smacked his pasty face. Instead, I kept my temper.

There must be some mistake, Mr. Boyce, I said in cold tones. "I was introduced to you as the chief accountant of this firm. I was given to understand that only the manager and the directors can give me instructions. Perhaps I’m wrong, so I will go up to the manager and enquire. Anyway,