Each of the original Eaton's flagship stores (Toronto Queen Street, Toronto College Street, Montreal and Winnipeg) employed dozens of display staff on site. Their job was to display the merchandise that Eaton's buyers had chosen for the coming sales season.
Joined by marketing, advertising, and special event planners, the display department designers met the buyers to preview the items for a particular season. Then, the planning started. |
Christmas 1972, Eaton's sales training pamphlet
Reference F229-82, Container 2
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Meet an Eaton's Display Designer
Robert Barnes, retired General Manager, Company Visual Merchandising and Display,, Toronto
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Robert Barnes joined Eaton's after graduating from the New York School of Interior Design (Toronto campus) in 1958. He apprenticed as an interior designer at Eaton's (the day before the Robert Simpson Company offered to hire him), soon switched to the 37-member display team of the Eaton'svCollege Street store and stayed with the company for the next 40 years.
After stints at College Street, the new Yorkdale Mall and the Eaton Centre, he rose to national manager of the Visual Presentation and Display Department. That job gave him responsibility for displays – windows and interiors – in all Eaton's stores across Canada.
On November 29, 2007, he spoke to the Archives of Ontario about his work and his memories of Eaton's. |
Robert Barnes, Toronto, 2007
Frank B. Edwards photo
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Learning the art
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" It was a great learning experience, because they were very particular on how you handled the merchandise and how you displayed it, because this was very fine quality merchandise. You could be handling many thousands of dollars worth of merchandise in the time frame of a day. . . . Accessories, lamps, chandeliers would be brought to wherever you were doing a display by the department. . . .
In those days, there was excellent practical training for people in that business. You learned how to drape fabric. You learned how to do all the fine points of presentation. And then if you went into the windows, which were the elite of the department, there would be four or five people working on the windows. The College Street store had 37 windows. Once the window was done and you left it, you couldn't even leave a pin on the floor of that window. It had to be absolutely perfect. That quality of perfection must be maintained at all times. Much of that standard is not seen today. But they have gained other things. . . |
Click to see a larger image (213K)
English china, College Street, Toronto, 1959
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-2425
Archives of Ontario, I0029043
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Planning the windows |
"A lot of people don't realize how the Visual Presentation business is so all-encompassing because in that business, in retail, you don't work unto yourself.
You work with the advertising and marketing department. You work with the special events department. You work with the public relations department. With the trades, the carpenters, the electricians. It's very all-encompassing, so that you attend meetings constantly with those groups.
Usually marketing is the department that drives the themes and the promotions, so whatever you do in presentation has to emulate the advertising. There were a lot of people who were all creative. . . . The planning starts many months in advance. . . .
If it was Christmas, they'd have started in July probably. We had large presentation rooms where everyone would go and the buyers would present all the merchandise, samples of the merchandise, and the theme of it and the colours, so that gave you an idea of the way the store should look to support the merchandise. . . . They were creative meetings, not that formal. We had a lot of fun. . . . There was always someone who came up with an amazing message or connection, and that was the headline for the ad in the newspaper. . . .
So if you had five windows, you'd just go away and prepare how you were going to put those windows together. And if you were creative, you'd also discuss with your manager those ideas of how you were going to attract the customers to the window. . . . We had some amazing talent at Eaton's. A lot of people got their start there. . . . Sometimes we'd hire an absolutely top creative person who gave you windows that Toronto would talk about, and they'd get into the newspapers. They knew what to do. . . ." |
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Preliminary designs |
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"There was a lot of sketching done years ago, in the days before computers and computer graphics. . . . Then we'd present our display plans to marketing and advertising. Fortunately, they were almost always overwhelmed when they saw the creative designs, but then we had to deliver . . . and in most cases we did. . . ."
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Click to see a larger image (243K)
Silk promotion, College Street, Toronto, 1962
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-1205
Archives of Ontario, I0028962
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“It's All About the Sale!” |
"You'd never make it in the business, if you didn't understand what it was all about, and what it was all about was to sell something, make a profit and make sure the window opened on time. . . . Display staff had to have a businesslike approach to their work because their work was very important. . . ." |
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Working With the Trades |
"In the big stores, there'd be a window supervisor, and they'd have juniors and seniors working those windows. They'd work together as a team, and they'd deal with carpenters, electricians and painters. Windows painted. Floors laid. It could be quite costly. . . . The designer worked around the clock. The support of trades people was amazing! They could do anything. It was incredible. If you had a problem, they could resolve it right away. They came up with lighting effects and all kinds of different things. . . . They enjoyed it but pretended they didn't, because if you were in the Eaton Centre and looking after an approximately million-square-foot store, well, they were very busy, and we were a hindrance, asking them to come down this afternoon and do this and do that. . . . But in the end, they did some wonderful stuff.” |
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Furniture, College Street, Toronto, 1950
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-1201
Archives of Ontario, I0028952
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In the late sixties, after five years working as Manager of the Display Department at the Eaton’s in Yorkdale, which had few display windows, Robert Barnes returned to manage display at the once chic College Street store.
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Reviving a Lost Art |
"We had a new home furnishings General Manager who was responsible for all home furnishing departments across Canada. He was American and quite a guy. And he was interviewing the key Home Furnishings people in the College Street store.
While I was away at Yorkdale, College Street had slipped very badly in their presentation and in their windows. I noticed that when I arrived. They had windows on Yonge Street that were just stacked with mattresses and big SALE signs, which was NOT what College Street was about. So I was called into the manager's office and, of course, I owned those windows at that time, and he said, ‘Well Barnes, I think your windows are pathetic.' He said, ‘They are the worst pieces of bad taste I have ever seen.'
I said, ‘You're absolutely right.'
I said, ‘They are. So what are we going to do about it?'
He was surprised by my reply! He said, ‘I want a whole set of Bloomingdale’s New York furniture windows within three weeks, right there on Yonge Street.'
He said, ‘Can you give it to me?'
And I said, ‘Yes I can.'
That was a very exciting time at College Street, because I gathered all the people in and said we were going to make something that we could really be proud of. And we went to work, and what we had to do, of course, we had to go to key furniture suppliers for Eaton's, and we had to have custom merchandise built for us, because the manager wanted the most spectacular windows. We devised the most incredible colour schemes, lighting and all kinds of stuff. . . .
And we opened and had all kinds of advertising, and we got letters from people saying they were so happy to see the College Street windows again, looking so magnificent, like they used to. . . . It ended up as a very interesting time to be at College Street, and I was there for 11 years. We tried to bring it back to what it was. . . ." |
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Stress |
"There was a tremendous amount of stress. It was like putting on a Broadway play. That is what display is all about, and opening night is all, “How much money have you spent on this?” and “Is it selling?” And all that sort of thing. . . ." |
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Mannequins |
In the days of College Street and Queen Street and Yorkdale, we'd go to New York twice a year to Market Week, spring and fall, and obviously you would buy new sets of mannequins, and you'd buy a dozen or two dozen. They were considerably expensive, and you really had to prove to the executive that they were a selling tool. But over the years, the use of fashion fixturing came about, and now you don't find as many mannequins as you used to. . . . |
Click to see a larger image (322K)
Christmas display, Toronto, 1961
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-728
Archives of Ontario, I0028740
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Custom Created Christmas Decorations |
"Animation was fairly simple. If it was a ballerina, she would be going around on a turntable. It was a fairly simple movement. . . . But the fact that the backgrounds, props and the figures were all handmade by Eaton's staff was quite amazing, because if you went to New York to see the most incredible animated Christmas windows . . . those windows were assembled. . . . They bought those from display houses in New York, companies that did nothing but animated Christmas windows. They would buy them as a package. . . . But we made ours. . . ." |
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Sales Advice for Designers |
"The windows are designed to sell something, so you have to be prepared for what it is that you're going to put in there that's for sale. And then, because you are in display and supposed to be creative, you are supposed to catch the customer's eye with . . . the story you build around it. . . .
Fashion is different from home fashion, because there isn't much else they use other than a prop. . . . If they're selling a red suit, then they might paint the whole window red or something like that.
But in furnishings, all the furnishings are the props. Like there is nothing that's in this room that isn't for sale. There are no props in here. You can buy anything. It's all for sale. It's all merchandise that our buyers have bought, and I'm going to sell. So designers have to learn how to be merchants. . . . A display person should be able to sell anything from kitty litter to a crystal chandelier. . . ." |
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“Cleanliness is Next To. . .”
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"I was responsible for observing if our doors were not clean. If the glass on our windows was not clean. We all had a standard to follow. . . . Customers will go into a store that has clean windows. So the service idea and maintenance of your building is all part of display and presentation. . . ." |
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