 Haberdashers (notions shop) in Białystok, Poland | |
| Occupation | |
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Activity sectors | Retail |
| Description | |
| Competencies | Sewing, tailoring |
In British English, a haberdasher is a business or person who sells small articles for sewing, dressmaking and knitting, such as buttons, ribbons, and zippers; [1] in the United States, the term refers instead to a men's clothing store that sells suits, shirts, neckties, men's dress shoes, and other items.
The sewing articles are called haberdashery in British English. The corresponding term is notions in American English [2] where haberdashery is the name for the shop itself, though it is largely an archaism now. In Britain, haberdashery shops, or haberdashers, were a mainstay of high street retail until recent decades, but are now uncommon, due to the decline in home dressmaking, knitting and other textile skills and hobbies, and the rise of internet shopping. They were very often drapers as well, the term for sellers of cloth.
The word haberdasher appears in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . [3] It is derived from the Anglo-French word hapertas. It is debatable what hapertas meant, but most likely it was some type of fabric or assorted small ware. A haberdasher would retail small wares, the goods of the pedlar, while a mercer would specialize in "linens, silks, fustian, worsted piece-goods and bedding". [4]
In Belgium and elsewhere in Continental Europe, Saint Nicholas remains their patron saint, while Saint Catherine was adopted by the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers in the City of London. [5]
In Britain Haberdashery was originally a system for selling goods, and only later came to be used as the name for the types of goods sold under that system. Some goods, beer, sugar, and flour, for example, are sold in multiples of a specific quantity. Beer is sold in pints and in a pub the customer can purchase a pint, or none at all. Flour and sugar are sold by the kilogram, or the hundredweight, or the metric tonne, but the customer specifies the weight of the item they want to purchase as multiples of a standard quantity.
Some other goods, meat, petrol, and land, for example, are sold where the customer specifies what they want to purchase and the merchant has to calculate what quantity that is, and then calculate the price. In a butcher's, for example, the customer can specify where they want the butcher to cut the joint, who then puts the cut on the scale to see how much it weighs, and therefore how much it will cost. At a petrol station the customer puts as much petrol as they want into their vehicle and the merchant has to calculate what quantity that is and then calculate the price. Land is also sold by this system. The customer specifies the particular piece of land they want to purchase, and the seller has to calculate the area of that piece of land in order to determine the sale price.
The system of sale where the seller has to calculate the quantity has been known as haberdashery since at least as early as 1533 when an Act of the English Parliament specified that meat must be sold by this system. The Act, 24 Henry VIII c. 2, specified that...
it may be enacted by your Grace and the Lordes Spirituall and Temporall and the Commons in this presente Parliamente assembled and by authoritie of the same, that every persone, whiche shall sell by hym self, or any other, the Carcases of Beoffes Porke Mutton or Veale or any parte or parcell therof after the first day of Auguste nowe nexte ensuyng shall sell the same by laufull weighte called Haberdepayes and no otherwise; the said Flesshe to be cut out in reasonable peces, according to the requeste of the byer in like fascion as before this tyme hathe ben used, without fraude or covyn. And that every persone, which by hymself or any other shall sell any Flesshe of the said Carcases, shall have withe hym where he shall make sale of the said flesshe sufficient Beame Scales and Weyghtes sealed called Haberdepayes for true servyng of the byers.Statutes of the Realm Vol 3 (1509-47) p. 472.
In time the term came to be applied to goods sold under this system and it still applies in many greengrocers where the customer may purchase one apple, or a handful of mushrooms, if that's all they want, and it is this system of sale that was originally called haberdashery. In time the term came to be applied to certain types of goods sold by this system, and then to shops that sold those goods, so that in a modern haberdashery the customer may purchase one button if that's all they want.
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred to as a "sale".
Inventory or stock refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.
A grocery store (AE), grocery shop (BE) or simply grocery is a foodservice retail store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, and is not used to refer to other types of stores that sell groceries. In the UK, shops that sell food are distinguished as grocers or grocery shops (though in everyday use, people usually use either the term "supermarket" or a "corner shop".
Cost-plus pricing is a pricing strategy by which the selling price of a product is determined by adding a specific fixed percentage to the product's unit cost. Essentially, the markup percentage is a method of generating a particular desired rate of return. An alternative pricing method is value-based pricing.
Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the carrying value of goods sold during a particular period.
Caveat emptor is Latin for "Let the buyer beware". It has become a proverb in English. Generally, caveat emptor is the contract law principle that controls the sale of real property after the date of closing, but may also apply to sales of other goods. The phrase caveat emptor and its use as a disclaimer of warranties arises from the fact that buyers typically have less information than the seller about the good or service they are purchasing. This quality of the situation is known as 'information asymmetry'. Defects in the good or service may be hidden from the buyer, and only known to the seller.
A loss leader is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below its market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods or services. With this sales promotion/marketing strategy, a "leader" is any popular article, i.e., sold at a low price to attract customers.
A purchase order, often abbreviated to PO, is a commercial document issued by a buyer to a seller, indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services required. It is used to control the purchasing of products and services from external suppliers. Purchase orders can be an essential part of enterprise resource planning system orders.
A receipt is a document acknowledging that a person has received money or property in payment following a sale or other transfer of goods or provision of a service. All receipts must have the date of purchase on them. If the recipient of the payment is legally required to collect sales tax or VAT from the customer, the amount would be added to the receipt, and the collection would be deemed to have been on behalf of the relevant tax authority. In many countries, a retailer is required to include the sales tax or VAT in the displayed price of goods sold, from which the tax amount would be calculated at the point of sale and remitted to the tax authorities in due course. Similarly, amounts may be deducted from amounts payable, as in the case of taxes withheld from wages. On the other hand, tips or other gratuities that are given by a customer, for example in a restaurant, would not form part of the payment amount or appear on the receipt.
The revenue recognition principle is a cornerstone of accrual accounting together with the matching principle. They both determine the accounting period in which revenues and expenses are recognized. According to the principle, revenues are recognized when they are realized or realizable, and are earned, no matter when cash is received. In cash accounting—in contrast—revenues are recognized when cash is received no matter when goods or services are sold.
Consignment is a process whereby a person gives permission to another party to take care of their property and retains full ownership of the property until the item is sold to the final buyer. It is generally done during auctions, shipping, goods transfer, or putting something up for sale in a consignment store. The owner of the goods pays the third-party a portion of the sale for facilitating the sale. Consignors maintain the rights to their property until the item is sold or abandoned. Many consignment shops and online consignment platforms have a set time limit at which an item's availability for sale expires. Within the time of contract, reductions of the price are common to promote the sale of the item, but vary by the type of item sold.
Mercery (from French mercerie, meaning "habderdashery" or "haberdashery" initially referred to silk, linen and fustian textiles among various other piece goods imported to England in the 12th century. Eventually, the term evolved to refer to a merchant or trader of textile goods, especially imported textile goods, particularly in England. A merchant would be known as a mercer, and the profession as mercery.
Field inventory management, commonly known as inventory management, is the task of understanding the stock mix of a company and the handling of the different demands placed on that stock. The demands are influenced by both external and internal factors and are balanced by the creation of purchase order requests to keep supplies at a reasonable or prescribed level. Inventory management is important for every other business enterprise.
The Sale of Goods Act 1979 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which regulated English contract law and UK commercial law in respect of goods that are sold and bought. The Act consolidated the original Sale of Goods Act 1893 and subsequent legislation, which in turn had codified and consolidated the law. Since 1979, there have been numerous minor statutory amendments and additions to the 1979 act. It was replaced for some aspects of consumer contracts from 1 October 2015 by the Consumer Rights Act 2015 but remains the primary legislation underpinning business-to-business transactions involving selling or buying goods.
A marketing channel consists of the people, organizations, and activities necessary to transfer the ownership of goods from the point of production to the point of consumption. It is the way products get to the end-user, the consumer; and is also known as a distribution channel. A marketing channel is a useful tool for management, and is crucial to creating an effective and well-planned marketing strategy.
A power purchase agreement (PPA), or electricity power agreement, is a long-term contract between an electricity generator and a customer, usually a utility, government or company. PPAs may last anywhere between 5 and 20 years, during which time the power purchaser buys energy at a pre-negotiated price. Such agreements play a key role in the financing of independently owned electricity generators, especially producers of renewable energy like solar farms or wind farms.
Special journals are specialized lists of financial transaction records which accountants call journal entries. In contrast to a general journal, each special journal records transactions of a specific type, such as sales or purchases. For example, when a company purchases merchandise from a vendor, and then in turn sells the merchandise to a customer, the purchase is recorded in one journal and the sale is recorded in another.
Customer to customer markets provide a way to allow customers to interact with each other. Traditional markets require business to customer relationships, in which a customer goes to the business in order to purchase a product or service. In customer to customer markets, the business facilitates an environment where customers can sell goods or services to each other. Other types of markets include business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C).
Section 90 of the Constitution of Australia prohibits the States from imposing customs duties and excise duties. The section bars the States from imposing any tax that would be considered to be of a customs or excise nature. While customs duties are easy to determine, the status of excise, as summarised in Ha v New South Wales, is that it consists of "taxes on the production, manufacture, sale or distribution of goods, whether of foreign or domestic origin." This effectively means that States are unable to impose sales taxes.
The retail format influences the consumer's store choice and addresses the consumer's expectations. At its most basic level, a retail format is a simple marketplace, that is; a location where goods and services are exchanged. In some parts of the world, the retail sector is still dominated by small family-run stores, but large retail chains are increasingly dominating the sector, because they can exert considerable buying power and pass on the savings in the form of lower prices. Many of these large retail chains also produce their own private labels which compete alongside manufacturer brands. Considerable consolidation of retail stores has changed the retail landscape, transferring power away from wholesalers and into the hands of the large retail chains.
Media related to Haberdashers at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of haberdasher at Wiktionary| Headwear | |||||||||
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