Word: retail
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Awaiting the settlement of the Retail Code, governing department stores, mail order houses and general retailers of all sorts large & small, were two collateral codes, the Drug Code and the Food Code. For into them was to go the Retail Code's key clause-or the principle it laid down -on price-cutting. The question of hours & wages was no issue; that had been settled by the President's blanket code. Labor was no problem. The nation's salespeople are wholly unorganized. The essence of the proposed magic was to end forever the blight of cutthroat competition...
Straus on "Fixing." At the Washington hearings, Mr. Percy first asked why the retailers did not submit a simple code which could be put through quickly and which would accomplish precisely what President Roosevelt wanted-raise wages, shorten hours, increase employment. Next he demanded some assurance that there would be labor and consumer representatives on the Retail Code's administrative board and its local committees. Neglect of consumers, he warned, was likely to be disastrous. And then Mr. Percy took a look at the disputed Article VIII: "If retail groups can fix prices at ... cost plus 10%," reasoned...
...order to check predatory and destructive price-cutting and to minimize retail operating losses resulting therefrom ... no retailer shall offer for sale, sell, exchange or give away any merchandise . . . below a minimum price which shall not be less than 10% above the manufacturer's net invoice delivered price to the retailer on all purchases direct from the manufacturer and not less than 7% above the net wholesale invoice delivered price on all purchases made through intermediary channels performing wholesaling functions. It is provided, however, that any retailer may meet any competitor's price on identical articles...
This was the way it would work: if a merchant bought a. lamp from a manufacturer for $1 he might not retail it for less than $1.10. If any other store in that merchant's trade area was able to get that lamp for 90? from a manufacturer, however, the merchant was permitted to use 90? as his base price and retail the lamp for 99?. even though that meant selling 1? below his own wholesale cost...
...than elsewhere." until harried by the Better Business Bureau to qualify it thus: "We endeavor (though we are not infallible) to sell our merchandise for at least 6% less than we could if we did not sell exclusively for cash." Macy's competitors saw to it that the Retail Code says: "No retailer shall use advertising which refers inaccurately ... to any competitor or his merchandise, prices, values, credit terms, policies or services." When Macy's observed, "Subdivisions 4 and 5 are aimed at Macy's and everybody knows it," nobody took the trouble to deny...