Roscoe R. Rau

Roscoe R. Rau is a largely obscure American business writer whose surviving public record centers on Selling Home Furnishings: A Training Program, a vocational guide prepared with Walter F. Shaw and issued in the early 1940s. The book was created as a practical manual for people working in furniture and home-furnishings sales, and it has remained the work most clearly connected with his name.

On the title pages and catalog records available online, he is identified as the Executive Vice President and Secretary of the National Retail Furniture Association, which suggests that his writing grew directly out of hands-on industry leadership rather than a purely academic background. That shows in the book itself: it focuses on clear explanation, product knowledge, customer needs, and day-to-day selling skill.

Because reliable biographical sources on Rau are scarce, not much more can be confirmed with confidence about his life beyond his professional association with the furniture trade and this published training work. Even so, his book offers a useful snapshot of how retail education and home-furnishings sales were taught in the United States during the 1940s.