A case study of one boutique's window figure leads the University to require its campus shops to keep one unit of every window-dressed line unsold on the figure, entered on the stock register as retained for display.
A season at one boutique's front window becomes the University's Display Retention Standard, counted at the close of each teaching period
The School of Emergent Priorities has long held that what a shop puts in its window and what it keeps in its stock room are two accounts of the same garment. A new teaching case, The Figure in the Front Window, Wearing the Best-Seller Nobody Could Buy, released today by Ms Ylva Ogunbanjo, Dr Anneke Tolan and Dr Iben Chikere, sets the two accounts side by side and has led the University to a standing rule for the shops it operates.
I came to the window expecting to count garments and left having learned to read a stock book, which is a different thing.
— Ms Ylva Ogunbanjo, Doctoral Candidate, School of Emergent Priorities
The case follows a single strip-mall boutique through one season, in which nine lines were dressed on the front-window figure in turn and the figure was undressed only when the rail had run out. In every line the garment on the figure was the one unit left over, and shoppers asked for it 118 times. The paper presents the season as a narrative with a teaching note and four assignment questions, so that the owner’s decision can be argued in a classroom.
The University has adopted the practice as the Display Retention Standard. In each campus shop, one unit of every window-dressed line will stay on the figure, be entered on the stock register as retained for display, and be set apart from customer request, staff discount and end-of-season clearance. A count of figures against register entries will be taken at the close of each teaching period, and the Standard makes no provision for waiver.
Dr Tolan said the Standard “gives a window something to answer for”, and that the School expects shops to find it easy to keep. The University counts it among the steadier things its shops will be able to say about themselves.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.44ho54.