Honest John: how a man brought us the price tag

Few months ago, I rediscovered this classic:

Patterns of Destiny — Produced by Your Story Hour

This is a CD I play in the car with my daughters, Imani (6) and Gabrielle (2), while trying to survive southern Cali traffic.

Your Story Hour is amazing narrated entertainment for both kids and adults. I cannot recommend this 24 track CD/Audiobook enough!

If you want to get started on it right away, here is my link to listen to books on Scribed. The first 60 days are free and you can cancel anytime. https://www.scribd.com/g/8yb8c7.

Now, to our “Honest John” story. In Patterns of Destiney, one of the chapters narrates the story of an American business entrepreneur named John Wanamaker.

John Wanamaker lived between 1838 and 1922 and completely revolutionized the industry of retail in the US.

His secret sauce? Simply this: John was honest.

John loved his customers and was willing to innovate in order to provide more value for them.

Honestly, 1800’s retail industry was synonymous with wild wide west:

Salesman trained to quickly evaluate the financial situation of a client and gave the price of items based on this assessment.

Further, as a customer, if you came and appeared wealthy you would get one price, if you came dressed more humbly you would be quoted a different price. All price settings were made using bias and haggling.

Here comes transparency:

In 1861, like a young biblical character called Ehud, “Honest John” could no longer live within the status quo.

As a result, he introduced a revolutionary innovation that the retail industry still uses today. Can you guess what it is? Wait for it… it is: the price tag! Once he adopted the price tag for items in his stores, this practice became standard for the industry at large.

Moreover, the same year he came up with another innovation: “8 days money back guarantee” to allow his beloved customers to return articles.

Building the first modern department store:

In 1875, empathizing with his customers that had to go from store to store. He bought an abandoned railroad depot and converted it into a large store that would have everything a family needs.

Building on innovation available in his time, John improved on the concept of the department store. His “modern” department store was a place of firsts: the first to offer fixed prices marked on every article, the first use of electrical illumination decorations (1878) (think Christmas lights!), the first to leverage telephone use between departments (1879), and the first use of pneumatic tubes to transport cash and documents (1880) to the department store business.[source]

Honest John’s legacy:

John Wanamaker kept on going.

Consequently, by the end of his life in 1922, he and his company Wanamaker & Co. are credited by business historians as :

First American business to offer vacations with pay to all his employees.

Frist American business to offer free healthcare to all his employees.

First American business to give all his employees a Christmas bonus.

Wanamaker & Co. was also a pioneer in the field of marketing. Wanamaker & Co. was the first retailer to place a half-page newspaper ad (1874) and the first full-page ad (1879).

Next time you feel convinced to do something differently, please give it a try, you might actually be on the verge of introducing your industry and/or the world to an innovation that is desperately needed. I hope that next time you see a price tag in a store, you will smile, think of John.