The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Theory Of Decoration
Small Shop Organization.- The small shop is never a highly organized establishment. The personnel of the average shop consists of the owner or owners, if it is a partnership, one or two Associate Decorators, one or moreJunior Decorators, and a secretary.
The number employed depends entirely upon the amount of business the shop is doing, and is inclined to vary according to busy seasons of the year. The owner, as has been stated, executes the most important commissions, docs the buying, and fixes the prices. If the business is to run as a partnership, the work as well as the profits, are divided between the partners. While probablv both will do decorating for their own clients, one may manage the shop itself, while the other may do the buying, planning of advertising and obtaining of business.
The Associate Decorators will of course do decorating, and may also have some extra assignment in the shop such as rearranging the window or shop display. The duties of the Junior Decorators have been described in a previous paragraph. The Secretary, will take care of all correspondence, check up and pay bills, enter stock, and record and return all samples obtained from wholesale houses. Everyone, Owner, Associates, Junior Decorators, and even the Secretary are primarily salesmen. The atmosphere of the small shop is at all times informal and the duties of one person may tend to overlap the duties of another, but there is one duty common to any one employed in the establishment and that is selling.
Establishing the Small Shop.—To establish the small shop one must have a certain amount of capital. To feel comfortable as to finances, one should have enough capital to carry the operating expenses for a year. It is possible to do it with an amount equal to the expenses of the first six months. It has been done with even less than this. The decorator planning to establish a small shop should first of all consider location verv carefully. If before starting, he has not quite a bit of potential business, he must depend entirely at first on the so-called "street trade" or casual passer by. For this reason he must select a location where there are many people passing by. His next consideration is overhead. He must keep his initial operating expenses as low as possible, and therefore should take no more space than he is actually going to need.
