Modern display style can be thought of as having started in 1889, when the Dry Goods Economist, founded in 1852, switched its focus from finance to retailing. The trade journal fed small merchants and large department store managers all over the country a steady of diet of instruction in retailing methods -- how to display and sell.
The journal was published weekly by the Textile Publishing Company in multiple sections, each devoted to a separate category of goods, each with its own cover. Despite the fact that "dry goods" meant textiles, ready-to-wear clothing, and notions, as distinguished from hardware and groceries, individual sections of the journal in the twenties were devoted not only to fabrics, fashions and toiletries, but electrical goods, furnishings and furniture, and equipment.
For example, the June 5, 1926 issue of the Dry Goods Economist features three sections: one on fabrics, fashions and notions, including a 4-page advertising spread on Kotex; a second section on equipment; and a third section on electrical goods, including electric refrigerators. Sprinkled throughout the sections are articles on department store windows and efficiency in managing displays, as well as on what individual merchants are doing to catch the consumer's eye.
In addition, monographs were published under the imprimatur of the Dry Goods Economist on such subjects as chain store history and different types of fabric -- cotton, linen, silk, wool and rayon. In Rayon and Other Synthetic Fibers (1929), W.D. Darby, textile editor of the Dry Goods Economist, reviews the origin and development of this new fabric, its method of manufacture, its merchandising, and the education of consumers in how to care for rayon fashions.
In 1911, with encouragement from the Dry Goods Economist, thirty-seven stores formed a dry goods trade association named the National Retail Dry Goods Association. Lew Hahn performed the duties of executive secretary, under various titles, until he retired in 1948. The August 1926 issue of the National Retail Dry Goods Association Bulletin instructs merchants in "Planning a Store-Wide Sales Event," and a "New Method of Fur Storage," and warns them that the "Solution of Returned Goods Problem Demands Reforms Within the Store Followed by Consumer Education." (INTRO NOTE Retailing)