Carriage Trade

by Stephen Birmingham

  “Oh, Mama.” He reached out and seized her hand. “Oh, Mama, I promise never to hurt you again. I promise you, I promise you, never to hurt you again.”

  17

  He had been giving a lot of thought to the way his mother and father—and Grandma Roth before them—had run their small millinery business and why they had been successful.

  The women who bought hats with the Leah Roth label certainly didn’t need them. Mrs. Astor hadn’t needed all the hats she bought. She bought Leah Roth hats because they were pretty, because they were one-of-a-kind. She bought them, in other words, because of the way they were presented to her, because of the way they were sold to her.

  The kind of women customers Si Tarkington wanted to attract to his store were women who really didn’t need anything at all. They already had more of everything than they would ever really need, and except for certain essentials such as soap and toothpaste they never shopped for necessities. Yet they shopped. Why? Because they enjoyed having attractive merchandise presented to them. They enjoyed being sold.

  He began making the rounds of the city’s smart specialty shops and department stores to see how well other merchants sold their merchandise. At the Small Leather Goods Department in Saks, he stood for twenty minutes waiting for someone to offer to help him. Meanwhile, not a dozen feet away, two saleswomen appeared to be chatting about a movie they had recently seen. He finally walked away. That sort of thing would never happen in his store, he decided. In the Better Dresses department at Lord & Taylor, he told the saleswoman that he was interested in buying a sweater set for his wife, only to be curtly told that he was in the wrong department. The woman neglected to mention the table stacked with sweaters right around the corner. That sort of thing would not happen in his store either.

  At Bergdorf-Goodman, he was told it was the wrong season for sweater sets. The salesperson failed to suggest an alternative gift for his wife. He telephoned the Gift Department at Bloomingdale’s and counted while the phone rang thirty-two times before anyone came to answer it. At Altman’s, he asked whether the sweaters he was looking at were cashmere or not. “I don’t know,” the saleswoman replied. “Look at the label. If it is, it’ll say so.” He began making notes of all these shortcomings of salesmanship.

  He decided to pretend to be interested in buying a new car and stopped at a Park Avenue showroom that sold expensive Jaguar automobiles. The salesman appeared indifferent to his interest; when he asked to test-drive a model with a $12,000 price tag, he was told, “That’s the showroom model, that ain’t no demo.” Si thanked the salesman for his trouble and left, and the salesman didn’t even say goodbye.

  On his shopping excursions, he was quickly struck by the similarity of the merchandise offered by the different stores. He found the same red-and-white print Clare McCardell shirtwaist dress at Saks, Bloomingdale’s, De Pinna, Lord & Taylor, Altman’s, Best’s, Bonwit’s, and Macy’s. All were identically on sale, at $59.95, marked down from $79.95. How many red-and-white print Clare McCardell shirtwaist dresses would a woman want to own? Only one, and she would buy it from the store that presented it most attractively and sold it most effectively.

  He began making lists.

  SALESPEOPLE

  1.

  Salespeople should be attractive-looking, well-dressed, with good taste in clothes. They should appear to be well-educated, which means well-spoken. Certain foreign accents (esp. French) may be acceptable. No obvious physical deformities. No Negroes.

  2.

  Salespeople should be polite, attentive, helpful, cheerful, but not kowtowish. The salesperson who does not have the item a customer is looking for in his or her department should escort the customer to department where item is located.

  3.

  If item the customer seeks is not sold in the store, salesperson should suggest an alternative purchase, e.g., “I’m afraid the store doesn’t carry that, but before you go let me show you something pretty that just came in.”

  4.

  Once customer gives his or her name for charge purchase, salesperson should address customer by name afterward. “Let me have this wrapped for you, Mrs. Jones.… Here is your package, Mrs. Jones.”

  5.

  Salespeople should record customers’ sizes, tastes, and color preferences, etc., etc. Never look a customer up and down and say, “You look like about a size 14, Mrs. Jones.”

  6.

  If a customer has made a purchase in excess of $200, salesperson should write customer a note (handwritten) on store stationery the next day, thanking customer for purchase.

  7.

  Good customers (in excess of $1,000 in purchases per year) should receive Christmas cards from salesperson. Also, if ascertainable, birthday and anniversary cards, etc.

  8.

  Salespeople should keep track of customers’ lives through society pages, etc. “I read about the lovely coming-out party you had for your daughter, Mrs. Jones.”

  9.

  Salespeople (without being pestish) should telephone customers periodically with store news or special events. “Some beautiful new coats just came in from Paris, Mrs. Jones, and I immediately thought of you.”

  10.

  Salespeople should never gossip behind counters, stick pens or pencils in hair or behind ears, wear pants suits, wear ankle-strap shoes, chew gum.…

  The list continued at some length. Si had already decided that his store would specialize in female designer apparel, so he began to draw up another list.

  MERCHANDISE

  1.

  Manufacturers tend to produce too many pieces of one design. Result: Same dress appears all over town at the same time.

  2.

  Tarkington’s apparel must be available only at Tarkington’s. This means manufacturers (in NYC and Europe) must be persuaded to create a special line just for us. This may be hard to do at first, but make this our long-range goal.

  3.

  No garment shall remain in store longer than one season. No garment shall go on sale. Each unsold garment will be disposed of elsewhere after its season—label out. No woman will find Tarkington’s label in Filene’s Basement.

  4.

  For custom couture, Tarkington’s should find its own in-house designer. Advertise for him …

  Not long after this item appeared on Si Tarkington’s list, the following advertisement ran in the male Help Wanted columns:

  Designer Wanted

  Small select Manhattan specialty shop looking for young, talented, unknown designer of haute couture. No experience necessary, only distinctive designing flair. Chance for rapid advancement. Bring portfolio. For appointment, call 555-3400.

  A stream of applicants followed, and Si set aside several hours of each business day to interview these hopefuls and scrutinize their work. He didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly, but was certain he would recognize it when he saw it. He divided the portfolios into two stacks, marked POSSIBLE and NO.

  One day he felt he had found what he wanted in a twenty-two-year-old Pratt graduate named Antonio Delfino. There was something about the young man’s fluid, floating designs that seemed to say he understood the female figure.

  “I would hate to have to design anything for a woman over a size ten,” the young man said. “I don’t design for porkers.”

  Si liked this young man’s cocky confidence and spirit. He also liked his name. He could envision the sign DESIGNS BY DELFINO above the entrance to the couture salon. He negotiated a contract with Mr. Delfino to design an exclusive collection for the future store, giving him two years to come up with “the most exciting couture collection in the world.” It was a tall order, but Antonio seemed delighted with the challenge.

  Si also added a new item to his lengthening list of merchandise rules:

  47.

  No item of female apparel will be offered larger than a Size 10. Let Lane Bryant have the porkers.

  He might not have realized it at the time, but Si was developing a me
rchandising philosophy.

  Si had formulated a two-year plan to prepare his store for its grand opening, which he was planning for the early autumn of 1958. Nothing was to be rushed. No corners were to be cut. Everything must be perfectly in place by that date, which was naturally calculated to take advantage of the Christmas shopping season. In addition to his many lists, he devised an elaborate work and production schedule, which included a two-week “dress rehearsal,” during which no customers would be admitted, but he and his staff would go through every phase of the selling operation in each department in an effort to iron out any possible wrinkles. Si often found himself waking in the middle of the night to jot down ideas on a pad he kept beside his bed.

  Telephone switchboard operators: No New York accents! Try for British accents if possible. Have them say, “Good morning, this is Tarkington’s.” Or, “Tarkington’s, at your service.” Which? Decide!

  Couture salon: Have soft, classical music piped in. Have full bar there. Bartender in white mess jacket, gold trim. Like pic in Life magazine of grand saloon on S.S. Mauretania. Grand piano in one corner.

  The next morning, he was able to find a magnificent Bösendorfer in rosewood and walnut, with its four extra keys in the treble and the bass. The sounding board was cracked, which was why it had found its way to a secondhand furniture store. Artur Rubinstein would have scorned it, but then Artur Rubinstein was not going to play it. It was appropriate to the room he had chosen for the couture salon because, Si had discovered, that room had originally been Mrs. Van Degan’s music room.

  The Van Degan mansion, meanwhile, was proving to be even more compatible with Si’s plans than he had first imagined. With the windows unboarded and the lights turned on, Si and his crew of workmen had discovered wonderful things. The floors, stripped of years of grime, turned out to be Carrara marble, which polished to a high gleam. Several of the stained-glass windows, when layers of city soot had been removed, turned out to be signed creations of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Nearly all the major rooms had working fireplaces, each with a distinctive carved wood or marble mantelpiece, and all these architectural details would be kept. The groin-vaulted windowless room that had been the Van Degans’ library was lined, floor to ceiling, with bookshelves behind glass doors, and the room even came with its own set of rolling library steps. These shelves could be used to handsomely display the sweaters, scarves, and so on, from the store’s collection of designer sportswear.

  The innards of the house, on the other hand, were another matter. The original copper plumbing was, for the most part, in good shape. But the electrical system was not, and as Si’s remodeling crew worked with their power tools they were continually blowing fuses and seeing noisy sparks crackling out of outlets. Moe Minskoff insisted he had a friend who had a friend in the city’s Department of Buildings who, for a small consideration, would see to it that the building passed the department’s inspection. But Si, who had seen the frayed and sputtering wiring himself, decided that such a course was far too risky. The entire building would have to be rewired and a costly circuit-breaker system installed.

  In the Van Degans’ day, the house had been heated by a huge coal furnace, and one vast area of the basement had been the coal bin. This would be converted into workrooms and storage rooms, and the coal furnace would be replaced with a smaller and more efficient gas heating and air-conditioning unit. As each of these costly jobs was completed, Si ticked off another item on his lists.

  In a way, it was a good thing that he and Moe had had their fight. It cleared the air. It also established a chain of authority, and there was no longer any question as to who was in charge of this project. Moe was useful when it came to rounding up investors. He seemed to have dozens of money sources. Most of these were for relatively small amounts—one or two thousand dollars each—but it all helped, and Moe had come up with one other $150,000 investor, whom he wouldn’t yet name.

  But, though Moe raised money, the handling and spending of it was done by Si alone. Only Si was empowered to sign the checks to the contractors and subcontractors working for him; after his courses at Hillsdale, he had become an excellent bookkeeper. For each of Moe’s contributions, Moe was given a receipt or promissory note, nothing more. Si knew that Moe was a gambler, and no gambler can ever be entrusted with cash.

  One night on the scratch pad by his bed, Si Tarkington found himself writing:

  As soon as start-up costs are recovered and we begin to see some black ink, think of ways to start easing Moe out of this.

  Moe had been right, of course. Si did feel little pangs of guilt, knowing that much of what he was spending represented his father’s lifetime savings, the father whom he had disgraced, and that he had also dipped into nearly half of his hardworking mother’s inheritance. But he kept promising himself that once his store was making money he would start to pay her back. And, he could rationalize, his own inheritance from his father was not his fault. If anything, it was his father’s fault, for being so imprudent as to leave no will. Perhaps his father had not really wanted him to have this money. But if he hadn’t wanted it, the old man should have been smart enough to see that he didn’t get it.

  Besides, unbeknownst to Moe—or to anyone else, in fact, except his lawyer, Jake Kohlberg—Si had another source of money. It was not a huge sum, but it could always be tapped if need be. From his days in the fur business, he had saved close to twenty thousand dollars. He had placed this money in the Dime Savings Bank of New York because he had been impressed with the bank’s claim that one could start an account there for as little as ten cents. During his years at Hillsdale, this sum had been gathering interest and had mounted up. He had not swept these funds into the store’s general operating account yet, but if it became necessary he would. By now, creating the kind of special store he had in mind had become an obsession with him.

  He was also having some success with his idea of leasing sections of the mansion to other merchants. He had discovered a jewelry store on West 47th Street called Bosky & Gompertz whose lease would soon be up and whose landlord was demanding a twenty-percent rent hike to renew. He approached Irving Bosky and Mel Gompertz and offered them what had been the Van Degans’ billiard room on the street floor. The partners were definitely interested. Si had only one request. He explained to them the kind of store he planned to open and the kind of clientele he hoped to attract. Somehow, he said as politely as he could, a jewelry shop in Tarkington’s called Bosky & Gompertz did not sound quite right. He explained that his own name was an Anglicized version of the original one. In return for a favorable lease, would the partners consider renaming their store? Flipping through the Manhattan telephone directory in search of stylish-sounding names, he even came up with a new name for them. What about Delafield & Du Bois? The partners agreed.

  Si was now working on a similar arrangement with a retailer who sold fine women’s footwear on the Upper East Side and was interested in the street-floor space that had once been the Van Degans’ morning room. All these extra sources of income would help.

  Still, he was troubled by the fact that Moe Minskoff seemed to be becoming more of a liability than an asset, as his plans for his store drew slowly toward completion. Moe, for instance, seemed to have become unduly concerned about Si’s sex life, or lack of it, and during those busy months Si’s sex life was indeed nonexistent. As the end of each week approached, Moe would drop by and say, “Let’s go out and get ourselves a coupla broads for the night. Whaddaya say?”

  “No, no. I’ve got to work on the books.”

  “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!”

  “No, no.”

  “C’mon. Gotta get your rocks off sometime. I got a friend who knows this redhead that gives terrific head. Only twenty bucks, and she’s got a girlfriend.”

  “No, no thanks, Moe.”

  Though Moe claimed to be devoted to his wife, Honeychile, he also said, “A man’s gotta get a little strange pussy every now and then. It’s good for him, a
nd it helps save the marriage.”

  “Not tonight, Moe.”

  “Whaddaya do for kicks, pal? Mrs. Fist and her five daughters? Jackin’ off ain’t good for you. It drains the vital fluids.”

  “Honest, Moe, I’ve got work to do tonight.”

  “Well, you’re missin’ out on a great piece of strange pussy, pal.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  Now, on the pad on the table beside his bed, he found himself writing, and underlining, and following with a string of exclamation points: Think of a way to get rid of Moe!!!!!

  Actually, there was one woman who, when he permitted himself to think about women at all, he thought of often. Her name was Alice Markham and she too was a redhead, though not from the same walk of life as the one Moe Minskoff had in mind.

  Assembling the kind of bright, attractive, and attentive sales force he wanted was turning out to be harder than he’d thought. In fact, of all the problems involved in preparing his store for its opening, this was easily the most difficult to solve. He’d decided that advertising for salespeople would not work. Most people who were looking for jobs wanted to go to work right away and were not interested in waiting several months for jobs to become available. And it was not economically feasible to put promising people on the payroll and give them nothing to do. He had decided on a word-of-mouth approach. As he made his rounds of Seventh Avenue designers, trying to persuade them to produce lines of clothing that would be sold exclusively at Tarkington’s, he let it be known that he was looking for salespeople who would look just right, talk just right, handle a customer just right. A few possibilities had turned up, but one particularly attractive young woman, who had been the directrice at Anne Klein, had said to him, “Well, if nothing better turns up between now and when you’re ready to start your training program, I’ll give you a call.” Si decided that this was not the sort of attitude he wanted at Tarkington’s.

  But Alice Markham was different. She was more than merely attractive. She had lovely red hair that she wore in a short, fluffy style, and she did not have the sort of pale, freckled skin that usually accompanies red hair. Her skin was smooth and lightly tanned, and she looked like a California girl, which, as it turned out, she was. She was a slim size six, and from the casual way she had tied a bright Hermès scarf across one shoulder it was obvious to Si that she had a sense of style. She needed, and wore, very little makeup other than brown lipstick. It was that quirky, distinctive touch that he admired most—the brown lipstick. She had passed the Van Degan mansion a number of times, had noticed the renovations going on, and, when a designer friend had told her that an expensive specialty store was soon to open there and was looking for salespeople, she had come to apply for a job.