Consuming Interest

Hy LESLIE ADRIAN IFIND there is an answer to my grievance last week that sales staff are often ill-informed about the products they are selling. For many big retailers today, it seems, no longer consider money invested in ensuring personal attention as a major item.

Much more important are things like 'eye- appeal,' decor and store design.

The twenty-first anniversary issue of Stores and Shops, a publication devoted to the pro- motion of efficiency in retail distribution, points out clearly the changing pattern of British retail trade.

In prewar days, competition for jobs ensured a fairly high standard of service in retailing. But full employment has attracted many people away from the relatively lowly paid behind-the-counter jobs. Public taste, too, has altered. Mr. F. H. Happold, writing in Stores and Shops,, says : 'Since 1936 the role of personal service has de- clined. Fewer customers expect or want it. Cash and carry has become the rule for everyday needs : standard-type hire-purchase for durables. At the same time skill behind the counter has become less necessary, scarcer and dearer. Full employment, pre-packaging and standardisation have seen to that. More and more substituted for personal service, sales talk and expert ad- vice are the attractions of decor, display and lighting. The trend towards self-selection favoured by the masses now in the money, which brought the variety store to the fore between the wars, has been extended.

'More important there has been a really radi- cal change in the distribution of incomes so that the great bulk of the retail clientele, for semi- luxuries as well as necessities, now come from the ranks of wage-earners. Geographically, the spending power has moved away from its pre- war emphasis in London and the south to the areas of heavy industry.'

But is this new wage-earning mass really as indifferent to personal service as the writer claims, and, as standards improve, will it remain so? I think not, for two reasons. One, because we are setting over the initial pleasure of self-service which we welcomed as a relief from the dreary queues of the war era. Two, with a 7 per cent. Bank rate, a credit squeeze and fear of unem- ployment, shops will have to think hard about returning to old-fashioned personal salesmanship as a means of maintaining turnover.

Happily—I think—some firms are not waiting for a recession. The same issue of Shops and Stores outlines new training courses for staff, sponsored by retailers and manufacturers and designed to raise the status of the sales assistant to professional level.

* • Few bargain-hunters who visit the Portobello Road penetrate beyond, the junk and silver stalls of this famous London market. But next time you are there, I suggest you press on through the fruit barrows and the stalls selling gaudy dress materials to Jamaican girls, to a small red door almost beneath the railway bridge. This is No. 262 and the china warehouse of Mr. L. Bartick. Since 1949 Mr. Bartick has built up a growing dollar trade selling export-reject china to Ameri- can tourists.

Although the price tags are in dollars, Mr. Bartick assures me sterling-spending customers are very welcome, and, looking round, I found some tempting bargains. There are good stocks of most of the well-known British makes of china ware and Rosenthal' ware from Germany. Prices are often half those in the shops for the perfect product. A first-grade export reject, as all this stock is, means there is some flaw in the colour or a bubble in the glaze : it does not mean chipped or cracked ware.

Blue Denmark ware, which has been in con- tinuous production in this country without any great modification for over one hundred years, is still, I consider, one of the most pleasant de- signs for everyday use, and Mr. Bartick has large supplies of the complete range. Sample prices are 2s. 6d. for cup and saucer, for coffee cup and saucer or for a dinner plate. At the same price there are also several shapes of fine white bone china cups and- saucers, including Spode. A 126- piece service designed by Raymond Loewy for Rosenthal costs over £90 in the shops. The same set in the reject warehouse is £45.

To help people who are out at work all day, an enterprising firm, Domestic Oil Supplies, of 126 Townmead Road, SW7 (Renown 7174), are ar- ranging evening deliveries 'of paraffin for domes- tic heaters. They will operate an exchange system of five-gallon drums or fill your own one- or two-gallon containers up to nine o'clock at night in the Kensington, Chelsea, Earls Court area. There is no delivery charge.

This is one of the first instances of evening de- liveries I have heard of. It is a long-needed amenity and I hope this firm's enterprise will be supported.

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The vagaries of the parsley trade have puzzled me for some time. I can, for instance, go to my fishmonger one day and he will fill my basket with free handfuls of the sprigs he uses to gar- nish his funereal slabs. On other occasions, the fish languish on fronds of fern and there is no parsley in the shop.

To find a greengrocer who stocks fresh parsley is also something of a gamble. I am told the public taste is changing and most people today prefer the dried variety. This astonishes me. Herbs such as thyme, sage and rosemary seem to survive the drying process without much loss of flavour, but dried parsley, I find, bears no re- semblance at all in taste or appearance to the fresh kind.

Yet there is no reason why greengrocers should not stock fresh parsley as well. Except in times of really hard frost or prolonged drought, there is always a good supply, a man in the trade tells me.

There is not much profit for the trader on parsley; on the other hand, it is a steady year- round trade and he does not often lose. Twopence should buy enough to make a parsley sauce at any time of the year.