Talk:Bogage and Sons
Consumer credit 50 or 100 years ago existed on a wide scale but looked a lot different than it does today. Today, credit cards and digital credit instruments (e.g. Apple Pay) are both corporate and anonymous. Consumers don't face their creditors unless they fall behind on their payments. Even then, the collector they face is generally a corporate third party, still anonymous and impersonal. The business of credit in the first half of the 20th century, however, was very personal. When a business offered its customers credit, it often meant that the business hired a "collector" whose job it was to collect weekly payments, going door to door, from those who had "accounts" with the business.
Louis Bogage was a salesman. He was selling pickles in Harlem when he married Annie Dobrin in 1915, and he was peddling curtains door to door in Worcester when he met Rebecca Fishman in 1919. He continued selling, most often door to door, and collecting payments on account in Trenton, with his occupation variously listed as collector (one time, in the business of poultry) and/or salesman. He spent a few years working at Kaplan's in Trenton (a retail business) before taking that business model and starting Bogage and Sons in Bristol. Not surprisingly, the business of Bogage and Sons relied heavily on their customers' credit. They offered "Nationally Advertised Brands," such as Jonathan Logan and Hart Shaffner and Marx, and encouraged buyers to use their credit. In fact, the company cited their 2,500 credit accounts in 1949 as evidence of their success and one reason for the expansion and relocation of the store.
Estellesass (talk) 11:20, 8 August 2020 (MDT) Estellesass Estellesass (talk) 11:20, 8 August 2020 (MDT)
I remember collecting for my zady one week while he and Bubby took a vacation, probably during the summer of 1960 they when went to Atlantic City (staying in a studio apartment in a brick building not far off the boardwalk near Steel Pier), and I had just gotten my driver's license. I had his piles of account cards and went from house to house collecting the small amounts listed on the cards. I remember driving around a depressed area that I had never even known existed, unpaved streets threading mostly flat-roofed concrete houses together. The customers seemed kind and ready with their payments and asked about him warmly. He appeared to be well-liked, and I got the feeling that they got a kick out of seeing me, his granddaughter, filling in for him.
Estellesass (talk) 10:58, 12 August 2020 (MDT) Estellesass Estellesass (talk) 10:58, 12 August 2020 (MDT)