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

[bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen)]

No one, myself included, Marc, suggested that there was anything miraculous
about the basket system - simply that it works very well for B&H. And unless
you know far more about B&Hs bottom line than the rest of us, you quite
clearly have no idea what you're talking about - but as usual want to prove
your self-perceived intellectual superiority to anyone who disagrees with
you by going off on weird, irrelevant tangents. But after all these years,
I'd be disappointed by a short, polite, on point response from you. ;-)



On 6/20/05 12:11 AM, "Marc James Small" <msmall@aya.yale.edu> wrote:

> 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
> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
> 
> NEW FAX NUMBER:  +540-343-8505
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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