Step Closer, Please

Like many another paintmaker, Cleveland's Glidden Co. was running into trouble. Its sales for six months were 20% below the same period a year ago; even its new, fast-drying "Spred-Satin" paint was selling slowly. But Glidden's tall, lean President Dwight P. Joyce was not one to take it lying down. Tired of "too much talk about business conditions and not enough action," he rounded up 32 of his top executives and dispatched them one Saturday morning to 28 Cleveland retail stores to peddle paint.

Joyce himself visited 15 stores and, like the other executives, demonstrated and hawked his product with the vigor of an oldtime pitchman (see cut). The results: usual Saturday sales of Spred-Satin quadrupled, purchases of other Glidden paints doubled. It was such a success that last week Glidden Co. planned to repeat the performances in Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis.

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