NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17979, 26 March 1930, Page 7

NEW ZEALAND PRODUCE

SELLS ON THE CLYDE. MARKETING BOARD’S FIRST SHOP. GLASGOW AND EMPIRE BUYING. (From a Special Correspondent.) GLASGOW, February 19. New Zealand has now closed her groat “drive” in the Empire Marketing Board’s new shop to spread the sale of her produce in Scotland. This sliop is situated at 173 Argyle Street, which, as all New Zealanders familiar with Glasgow will know, is in the very centre of the city and on its busiest shopping thoroughfare. The Empire Marketing Board has rented the shop until the end of May, and is handing it over, for a period of a fortnight each, to the Dominions and Colonies to display their produce and to sell samples. New Zealand's turn came first. Crowds Roll In. Crowds clustered round the spacious windows while the staff from New Zealand House were still hard at it arranging their goods. As /soon as the shop opened it was packed, and from morning until closing time the counters were three and four deep with visitors. Butter and cheese, mutton and lamb, honey, dried and condensed milk, toheroa soup, tinned sheep’s tongues, and apple display material were on view. Samples were sold where possible. A kitchen, installed upstairs and in charge of expert women demonstrators, gave demonstrations of cookery, with only Empire ingredients used three times daily. The women of Glasgow packed out these tions. Catering for Traders. Customers were thus catered for thoroughly. But the housewife was not the only customer considered. The importance of the wholesale and retail traders was not forgotten. Every effort was made to enlist the the interest and active support of the traders of Glasgow. They were offered all facilities for stocking New Zealand produce, so that shoppers who 1 had s-een what took their fancy in the Empire Marketing Board Shop might buy it—and, it was hoped, give a regular order for it—from their ordinary retailer. Special accommodation was set apart, above the sliop, where traders might sit In comfort and talk business with New Zealand or Empire Marketing Board officials. Message of the Shop. The appeal made to Glasgow through this shop was clearly stated by the Right Hon. William Adamson, M.P., Secretary of State for Scotland, and was eloquently reinforced by Mr H. T. Drew, the New Zealand publicity officer, at the opening ceremony. The Empire Marketing Board asked the people of Glasgow to buy from the farmers of the Old Country as. a first choice. Empire buying begins at home; that is a fair principle, applicable to the Dominions equally with the Old Country. But England and Scotland do not produce more than a tiny .fraction of their own needs. Let them buy the rest from New Zealand and from other parts of the Empire. Always choose the pr.oduce giown b} vour 'own kinsmen and good friends in New Zealand rather than foreign produce. That was the message brought to Glasgow by the opening of the Empire Marketing Board shop. It was not, of course, a new message, but it is one that bears repetition and all the signs go to show that in Glasgow it has been received by a willing public.