Photo courtesy of Maine Memory Network
Bear of a Marketing Campaign
Yesterday’s merchants resorted to some outrageous branding techniques to turn a profit. Reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ England, shop owners in 19th- and early 20th-century Maine hung king-sized spectacles and pocket watches, even fake boars’ heads, to pull in customers. And no pharmacy was complete without an oversized mortar and pestle over the front door.
One week circa 1895, clothiers Wood and Ewer displayed dozens of fur coats and cloaks outside all four stories of their Bangor shop and photographed it. But Milltown fur merchant James H. McMann went them one better when he blanketed his store with 141 bear skins and posed men with rifles in front for a Wild West-style view dated October 1, 1913.
Material at the St. Croix Historical Society in Calais suggests the 65-year-old McMann went to great lengths to pull off his publicity stunt. After skins and hides he bought began piling up, he and a couple neighbors got a ladder and a bucket of nails and went to work. Apparently there was no limit to how many bears a hunter could shoot and PETA protesters were not even on the horizon.
Crowds streamed into Milltown, a part of Calais located near the bridge to Milltown, New Brunswick, and about a mile downriver from the new St. Croix River bridge. When the shock and awe wore off, McMann tagged and bundled his bear skins and shipped them to the Great Britain fur pool for a tidy profit.
Though the postcard says “fur merchant,” McMann chiefly operated a variety store, which St. Croix Historical Society president Al Churchill says sold general merchandise. In addition, McMann bought and sold furs of all sorts and his store was probably an exchange for the fur trade in the area.
Today, storefront branding is confined to window signs, balloons, wind socks, and an occasional costumed human waving news that “Everything must go.” It’s time to toast pioneers like James H. McMann, from whose imagination sprang a marketing ploy that, through a carefully preserved postcard, has become part of Maine history.
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