On Sun, 31 Aug 2014 08:40:26 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 8/31/2014 1:32 AM, micky wrote:

Wanamakers of Philadelphia was the first store in the USA to have fixed
prices and no dickering, around 1870 or 80 iirc. If they had patented
fixed prices, would other stores not have been allowed to do that? (He
had other marketing innovations too, all of them appealing to customers)

How many of you have heard of Wanamakers? It's a big name in the
northeast, but I don't know about Canada or the rest of the US, It's a
department store,


My mother took us there when we were little kids. The had a really nice

That's great.

Christmas Wonderland and also the largest pipe organ in the world in a
big hall in the center of the store.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanamaker%27s

or maybe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanamaker's (Actually I left out the
apostrophe entirely and it still went right to it.)

has a picture of the Grand Court, emphasizing the organ. The store had
been the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad station.

He permitted cash returns and invented the price tag. His employees got
access to some sort of business schooling, free medical care,
"recreatonal facilities, profit-sharing, and pensions," way back in the
19th century. The webpage has more of the many firsts there..