Introduction
Jean Gordon Goldman, my best friend and my wife, presents this work as a review for the professionals and as a primer for the edification of a new generation which has chosen one area or another of the fascinating corset and brassiere field for a career. She has written it in an absorbing, easy-to-read manner, including amusing or interesting experiences.
This book includes three sections covering the history of the profitable and growing foundation business; its fashion and merchandising aspects; and the relative importance of fitting.
The female population generally is in fine shape... thanks to the creativity of the fiber and fabric makers, and to the versatility and know-how of garment manufacturers.
Developments in the fields of fiber-rubber, elastic and the newest miracle, spandex, combined with designing ingenuity, have put the female into a better buying mood for more and more foundations. The predictions some time ago that retail sales would reach the one billion dollar mark by 1970, have been changed. Many in the industry are openly confident that their combined efforts will achieve this goal at an earlier date.
Retailers who have a successful formula which inter-relates fashion, merchandising and service will get their share of this volume potential and profit growth. This formula should include complete assortments of garments, for all figure types, related to current fashion.
Customer loyalty to brands and to stores can be won only if the merchandise is available when the customer wants it. But having the merchandise is not enough. Stores must make it easier for customers to buy garments that are correct for them. This calls for the restoration of fine service by the sales staff to the customers who at one time were accustomed to this service and assistance to the newer generation which has never been exposed to professional guidance.
Retailers have lost sight of this extra service that is psychologically parallel to public appreciation of the classics in the arts-many of which, in literature, music and the theater, are re-read, re-heard and re-seen. The woman who walks into a specialty shop and expects to enjoy personal service is like
the woman who goes to re-hear a Beethoven symphony with pleasure hundreds of times. The teenager who thinks she is buying right when she purchases a badly-fitting first brassiere over the counter might also think she is hearing good music when she listens to a teenage song plugger who cannot sing. She has not been taught music appreciation nor has she been exposed to fine service.
If retailers will again make service an important part of their corset and brassiere departments, this ideological service could be music to her ears. It will not only benefit the foundation garment departments, but will bring traffic into the entire store.
The section of this book which concerns fitting will be most helpful to retailers who wish to take the idea of service seriously. It can also help manufacturers' representatives in their daily merchandising services to stores.
Through a constant awareness of the ways and means to serve, stores will share in the excellent prospects for bigger foundation sales and profits.
Mack Goldman
Women's Wear Daily
Author's Preface
A young, wide-eyed high school graduate was asking me about enrollment in the adult course at The Fashion Institute of Technology in "Corset and Brassiere Fitting, Selling and Merchandising." She said, "I have been working in the corset section of a department store in Rochester, New York, and just love it. I want to make this business my life's work. I like people and want to help them. I think the fashion aspect of the business is fascinating and the merchandising challenges in the corset and bra department are very exciting."
I almost threw my arms around her neck. Not because she was from my home town, but here at last was a young woman who was smart enough to see the potential and excitement in the fastest growing industry of the fashion world. She was so different from the young merchandising students who join retail training squads in our great stores and cannot see beyond the Seventh Avenue ready-to-wear glamour markets over East to Fifth and Madison Avenues where the corset and brassiere market flourishes in New York City.
Here, as in Chicago, California and New England, new methods, combined with hundred-year-old know-how of women's figure problems, have turned the American corset and brassiere industry into what seems like a custom business on a mass-production scale, there isn't a figure type that cannot be fitted.
New fibers, new fabrics, new designs, new patents, new methods of manufacture plus the whole new concept in channels of distribution all contribute to the excitement of this very profit. able business.
I have worked most of my adult life in this business, and I know of no other industry which has so many cooperative, friendly people; with two associations which band together to protect both labor and management and to promote world interest in American corsetry; with a salesmen's club; and a women 5 club that raises money for worthy causes.
In 1947, I wrote a small book called The Good Corsetiere, published by The Strouse Adler Company, for women learning to sell corsets. This book is written for retailers, fitters, fashion coordinators and directors, display managers and ad managers interested in selling, buying, merchandising, chain store operation, and new distribution channels.
This book is designed to assist wholesalers, new show room personnel, new salesmen coming into the industry, factory employees who wish to enter management, and management that wishes to learn more.
When you realize that it took the corset and brassiere industry sixty years to reach a volume of sixty million dollars, and in one decade it doubled that figure, and in three more decades it reached a figure of about three-quarters of a billion dollars in retail sales, you can understand why I would like to dedicate this book to all those who have helped to make the industry great. This is an industry for fun and excitement. We spend the greatest number of our waking hours at our work, so why not enjoy it and make a contribution to it. I greet the newcomers who recognize the wonderful potential of the corset and brassiere industry.
Continue to History Of Fashion In The American Corset And Brassiere Industry
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Last updated January 30, 1998