INDUSTRIES WEEK.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19474, 8 May 1925, Page 6

INDUSTRIES WEEK.

Tim Dunedin Manufacturers’ Association is to be congratulated on its decision to arrange that an Industries Week shall be observed in Dunedin during the Winter Show season. The idea of an Industries Week has a great deal to commend it. If the limitation of tho programme to the period suggested may seem to savour somewhat of unnecessary caution, it is to bo recognised that tho Winter Show attracts large numbers of visitors to Dunedin, that it lends for the time being an all-round impetus to tho life of tho city, and that it introduces a particularly favourable occasion for the execution of the scheme whicli the Manufacturers’ Association has in view. An effort to bring tho products of local industries more prominently and more directly before the notice of the purchasing public should bo well worth the making. In any event, it represents a progressive movement, and even those who are not closely interested in its results should be able to contemplate its possibilities with satisfaction. The effect of an Industries Week upon the outward aspect of tho city should bo of a welcome kind, even if it bo but transient. There is considerable force in the suggestion that the city would bo the better for “a brightening up” during Show M eek. It would be tho better, it may be added, for as much brightening up -of a more permanent character in the shopping areas as would reasonably ho possible. Incidentally, part of the plan adopted by the Manufacturers’ Association is to shew what can bo accomplished by lighting and decoration to make the season of Show Week attractive. The notion is far from visionary. There has been a noticeable improvement latterly in many of tho shop-fronts of the city, and this lias been accompanied by. an advance in tho direction of general display on what are called “ up-to-date linos” which is all to tho good. It will not have escaped attention that the newer typo of shop-window lends itself to the attainment of very effective results through the medium of colour

and lighting, and illustrations of enterprise in this connection are to some extent a guide to the progressive spirit of the retail section of the business community. In these days of electric lighting there are possibilities in the way of shop-front displays, which present no mean field for artistic talent, that could not be dreamed of in former limes. An Industries Week may well furnish a useful test of what Dunedin can do on a considerable scale in the way of window dressing.