Editing Singer Corporation (section)

===Marketing before the World Wars===
[[File:Paolo Monti - Servizio fotografico - BEIC 6346702.jpg|thumb|left|Advertising photograph by [[Paolo Monti]], Milan 1963. The machine is a model 191.]]

The Singer sewing machine was the first complex standardised technology to be mass marketed. It was not the first sewing machine, and its patent in 1851 led to a patent battle with Elias Howe, inventor of the [[lockstitch]] machine.  This eventually resulted in a patent sharing accord among the major firms.<ref name="Joan Perkin 2002">Joan Perkin, "Sewing Machines: Liberation or Drudgery for Women?" ''History Today'' 52 (Dec. 2002).</ref> Marketing strategies included focusing on the manufacturing industry,<ref name="Godley 2006">{{cite journal |last1=Godley |first1=Andrew |author-link=Andrew Godley |title=Selling the Sewing Machine Around the World: Singer's International Marketing Strategies, 1850–1920 |journal=Enterprise and Society |date=June 2006 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=266–314 |doi=10.1093/es/khj037 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/enterprise-and-society/article/abs/selling-the-sewing-machine-around-the-world-singers-international-marketing-strategies-18501920/D1808771EB8E71918105884E42E7E276}}</ref> gender identity,<ref name="Coffin 1994">{{cite journal |last1=Coffin |first1=Judith G. |title=Credit, Consumption, and Images of Women's Desires: Selling the Sewing Machine in Late Nineteenth-Century France |journal=French Historical Studies |date=1994 |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=749–783 |doi=10.2307/286691 |jstor=286691}}</ref> credit plans,<ref name="Coffin 1994"/> and "hire purchases."<ref name="Joan Perkin 2002"/>

Singer's marketing emphasized the role of women and their relationship to the home, evoking ideals of virtue, modesty, and diligence.<ref name="Coffin 1994"/> Though the sewing machine represented liberation from arduous hand sewing, it chiefly benefited those sewing for their families and themselves.  Tradespeople relying on sewing as a livelihood still suffered from poor wages, which dropped further in response to the time savings gained by machine sewing.<ref name="Joan Perkin 2002"/> Singer offered credit purchases and rent-to-own arrangements, allowing people to rent a machine with the rental payments applied to the eventual purchase of the machine,<ref name="Joan Perkin 2002"/> and sold globally through the use of direct-sales door-to-door canvassers to demonstrate and sell the machines.<ref name="Godley 2006"/>