American Fashion & Department Stores (early '50s)
Another vintage retail educational film. I wish this was brighter as the picture's pretty dark at times, but I still got a kick out of it anyway and think you guys will too.
This one covers a marketing class that goes on a field trip to a Montgomery Ward store to learn the ways of effective catalog merchandising and the overall American system of buying and selling goods. It takes a few minutes (of its 22min length) to start getting to the point, but it does eventually--in typical fifities cheesy, heavy-handed style!There are some nice shots of '50s era shopping centers and department stores (including Montgomery Ward of course) laced throughout, which also makes this worth watching.
Noticed this film came from Archive.org otherwise. Too bad though it's missing some footage as well, and given the time it was made, the world has changed gradually from the way things were for our neighboring countries 50 years ago (they have Wal-Mart in China nowadays). Wonder if they still barter in India?
ReplyDeleteOf course nowadays those in rural communities might be lucky to have net access or a Wal-Mart to shop at these days. Too bad though the community up across the stateline from me, Bedford Twp., voted down a plan to build a Wal-Mart SuperCenter in their grounds. It sucks since that would've been closer for my mom to go there than the other nearest Wal-Mart location.
ReplyDeletehttp://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=local&id=4763498
Hopefully if they can try to add an Wal-Mart location in the northern section of town, I wouldn't mind having it perhaps where the now defunct Northtowne Square is (be in tight competition with the Meijer's a mile or so to the east).