Dawson Black: Retail Merchant Part 35

Every youngster likes a toy that moves. Get him one for Christmas! We have a large variety of moving and other Christmas toys. They are toys that will fascinate the youngster. They are strongly built toys, too, that will last.

Railroads, 50 to $4.00

Constructor outfits, 25 to $6.00

Bamboo, the wonderful tumbling clown, 50

Automobiles, moving animals, juvenile tool outfits--hundreds of other things the children will like.

Bring the youngsters in and let them enjoy the fun of our toy bazaar.

La.r.s.en told me that he had cleared away two long tables, placed them together, covered them with cheap oil cloth, and filled them up with toys, arranged in such a way that they could all be worked and handled easily.

"I have Jimmie keeping 'em going all the time. He is working harder, playing with them things, than he ever did in his life," he said, with a chuckle.

I couldn't help smiling at La.r.s.en's cheeriness. He certainly had been different since we had had that dinner at home and had made Mrs. La.r.s.en realize that I was looking after his interests as well as my own.

I thought La.r.s.en had done quite well on that ad, although there were some things in it that I'd have changed.

He said that a lot of toys had been sold because he had them working. I had intended to do something of that kind myself, only I had felt too sick to attend to it. I remembered the big success we had had with electrical appliances when we demonstrated them in actual use.

There were only six days to Christmas! Still, if we had a good week we ought to clear those toys out.

La.r.s.en told me Stigler's five-and-ten-cent store was packed. He thought it was a good thing for us.

"Lots of folks go there," he said, "for 5- and 10-cent things. We're next door. They come to us for better stuff."

Perhaps there was something in that, after all.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

A NEW COMPEt.i.tOR

The New England Hardware Company were to open their store on Macey Street on January one. I knew because I had received the following letter from them, which evidently they had sent to every house in town:

Dear Sir:

The New England Hardware Company open their Farmdale Store January 1, at 62 Macey Street. This store will be in charge of Mr. Roger Burns, who for many years was in charge of the kitchen goods department at the Bon Marche.

We earnestly solicit your patronage at our new store--not because by so doing you will help Mr. Burns (who has an interest in the profits of the company) but because you will get the best in kitchen hardware at cut-rate prices.

You will readily appreciate that an organization like ours can give you greater value than the usual hardware store, where the goods are bought in small lots by the proprietor or manager, who has many other duties to attend to. Our buyers are experts, who devote all their time to the study and search of markets; buying in tremendous quant.i.ties (for twenty-seven stores), and paying spot cash. We are thus able to sell merchandise for less than usual prices.

Mr. Burns hopes to meet all his friends on the opening day, January one. He has a surprise gift for every visitor to the store on that day.

Respectfully yours, NEW ENGLAND HARDWARE COMPANY.

That had struck me as being a pretty good letter. It certainly was a clever idea to get Burns as their manager because he was very popular in the town. When the Bon Marche failed he had come to me, but, of course, I couldn't use him. Then he had told me that the chain-store people had made him an offer, and he went to work in their Hartford store. At that time he didn't say anything about the possibility of coming back to Farmdale as manager of a store for them. I don't think, as a matter of fact, that he had any idea that they were going to open a new store.

Burns was a bully good fellow, and I honestly hoped he'd be successful, although I hoped the new store would not hurt us much. . . .

The day after I received the circular letter I had a telephone call from Burns. He had come into town to take charge of getting the new store ready. We made an appointment to have Christmas dinner together and he promised to tell me how his firm had gone about opening the new store in Farmdale.

I had been doing a little figuring, and I didn't know whether we'd do our $30,000 in the fiscal year or not. Up to the end of November--that is for six months--our business had amounted to $13,872.00, $1,128.00 below our quota. However, in the last two days we had taken in $345.00 and I had been able to pay off the last few of our monthly accounts.

Barrington, too, had told me he'd wait until the first of the year; but insisted that I tell him then what I could do.

I wished I could increase the business a little bit more, for my expenses were still high, and we were all of us feeling f.a.gged through being under-staffed. We could well have done with another clerk; but we just couldn't afford it. However, while Betty was away I could work day and night, if necessary, and then, perhaps, by the time she got back, we'd have things in such shape that I could afford another clerk.

As arranged, I had Christmas dinner with Roger Burns at his boarding-house.

After dinner Roger told me some of the methods that the New England Hardware Company used in locating stores and carrying on their business.

"You know, Jackdaw," said Roger (when I was at school the boys all called me Jackdaw; one reason I suppose was that I was so dark and my first name was Dawson), "it is some months since the New England Hardware people hired me and sent me to Hartford as a.s.sistant in their store there. After I had been with them for a month, they s.h.i.+fted me to their Providence store for a month as a.s.sistant manager. From there I was sent out as traveling inspector, and spent two months in visiting each of the stores and spending a day or two at each one. Then I was called to New York--as you know, they have their head office there--and was coached in methods of handling the records which they required store managers to send in to the office.

"Not only did they tell me what records had to be made out, and how they had to be made out, but they showed me what happened to them when they reached the New York office, and also explained very clearly the need for all those records.

"I learned more about business, Jackdaw, in those six months than I ever knew before. They didn't just tell me what to do, but they told me why it had to be done. Every question that I asked them about running a store they answered for me. No trouble seemed too great for them to take, if it was going to help me to understand how they did business. I thought they were telling me altogether too much; they were telling the secrets of the conduct of the business; but Mr. Marcosson (he's a weird combination--a Scotchman with a sense of humor)--Mr. Marcosson is the general sales manager--he said that I couldn't be any use to them, unless I knew all about the business; what the goods would cost me in the store, how much profit I ought to make, how much turn-over I ought to get, and Oh! it would take me a month to tell you all the facts they gave me.

"One thing has stuck out clearly in my mind from this training, and that is, that I can do my work for them much better than would have been possible if I had been working under an ordinary store proprietor. I know _why_ things should be done. There's real horse sense at the back of every move they take. They don't guess at things. They find out. If you were to ask me what accounts for the big success of chain-store organizations I should say that it is that the chain-store organization _knows_ what it is doing, while the ordinary retailer _guesses_ at what he is doing. For instance, they are looking for towns for two men who are going through the same training that I went through--"

"Do you mean to tell me, Roger," I broke in, "that they spent six months' time in training you, when you might leave them at any minute?"

"H'm, h'm," said Roger, "that's a fact. Marcosson said that, as soon as any one could do better for me than they could, they expected me to leave. And it is a fact that, out of all the managers they have had, only three of them have left. Of course, it's a fairly young organization--been in existence only about five or six years; but the employees are treated so well that they rarely want to leave.

"You know I get an interest in the profits the store makes--"

And that reminded me, I hadn't yet worked out that profit-sharing plan for my people! It had been no easy job.

"Another thing," continued Roger, "Marcosson said that impressed me very much. 'We are going to give you a share in the profits, Mr. Burns,' he said, 'because we believe it is due you.' You know, Jackdaw, Marcosson is the kind of man you can speak right out to--not the kind of man you get scared of at all; so I said to him: 'I've heard many people say that profit-sharing isn't a success.' 'So far as we are concerned, it is,' he said. 'Most retailers who go into profit-sharing plans go into them with but a very slight study of the problem. They don't think the thing through to a logical conclusion, and they put into operation some half-baked plan which, of course, does not work out right, and then, instead of blaming the plan they d.a.m.n the policy as a whole!

Profit-sharing is necessary in modern retail business; but its operation must be planned in a common-sense way to be successful. One might just as well complain of the principles of arithmetic because one cannot do a sum correctly!'

"But let me get back to my story of how we came here," said Roger, lighting a fresh cigar. . . .

While he was talking, I had been looking at Roger, and comparing him to the old Roger Burns I had known a year or so ago. He had grown bigger--not in size, you understand, but he was a bigger man--he had a personality which he never had had before. He had more confidence in himself, and I attributed this to the fact that he was sure of what he was about. He knew exactly what was expected of him--he had been trained thoroughly to do it, and that had given him a confidence which I was sure will make for his success in Farmdale. Frankly, I felt that, as a compet.i.tor, he was going to be a much keener one than Stigler ever had been.

"The New England Hardware Company," continued Roger, "has money enough to open as many stores as it wishes; but it can open stores only as quickly as it can get men. So the first thing it seeks is a man who is likely to make a good manager, then it looks for a location in which to place him."

"Is that how all chain-store organizations do?" I asked.

"No," replied Roger. "Some of them look around for towns where the merchants are not on to their jobs. That's the way some of the big drug store chains in particular operate. They go around to the towns where the existing drug-store proprietors are dead, and don't know it, and where there is practically no compet.i.tion for them, and that's where they open the store.

"My people go at it a little differently. Where possible, however, they try to open a store with a manager who is known in the location."

"Do they ever buy existing stores and make them part of the chain?"

"No, although some chain organizations do that."