A Quarter a Day

Like most retailers, the Grand Leader Store of South Bend, Ind. had been bucking a deep depression in appliance sales. One week in July it sold just six refrigerators. But the following week it sold 247.

The difference was a little black box with a face like a parking meter's and a slot like a piggy bank's. Called the Meter-Matic, it is similar to pay-as-you-go meters used during the depression, then discarded when money began growing on trees again. The gadget is fastened atop the refrigerator and the purchaser drops in a quarter a day (or more, depending on the installment conditions); if he fails to drop the coin in the slot, the electric current shuts off.

Chicago's International Register Co. sells the hungry little gadget to retailers for $6.95. By last week, only a month after going on the market, the Meter-Matic was on some 5,000 refrigerators. In one of its zones, Nash-Kelvinator began July with the largest inventory it had ever carried. Meter-propelled sales soon cleaned out the stock. The General Furniture Co., in Chicago's slummy South Side, sold more than 2,000 refrigerators and other appliances in two weeks, almost all on the meter plan.

Retailers using the Meter-Matic plug the slogan: "No money down, as little as 25-c- a day!" Merchants who have attached meters to stoves, washers and television sets have run into a snag: customers tend to feed the meter only when the appliance is in use. But shrewd retailers have gotten around that by attaching the meter to the refrigerator, no matter which appliance is bought. Refrigerators are different: they have to keep going.

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