STIGLER PREPARES ANOTHER BLOW
When I told Fellows about my trading stamp idea, he suggested that I
think over the question once more, before taking them up, and he asked
if he could be present at the interview when the Garter trading stamp
man came around.
It was hard to tell what to do. I thought trading stamps were a good
thing; but Fellows of the Flaxon Advertising Agency apparently didn't
like them, and Barlow didn't either. When I talked it over with Betty,
first she said, "Don't touch them at all," then she said, "I don't know,
try them!" Finally she said she didn't know what to think of them. The
decision was, after all, up to me and no one seemed to know much about
them.
Well, I agreed to think it over again, and when Bulder, the Garter
trading stamp man, came, I put him off until the next day. Fellows was
going to be there when he came, and I thought I'll let those two have it
out and put my money on the winner.
Stigler was up to a new dodge.
Until the first of the month there had been a small men's furnishing
store next door to me. Well, Dorman, who ran the store, had ended by
running it to the wall. Poor fellow, he'd been in that location for over
forty years, and at the time was a man of nearly seventy. He never had
done much business, at least not since my knowledge of him, and, towards
the last, the place had been getting seedier and seedier each month, and
finally he had had to give it up. He told the Mater--he knew her quite
well--that he never had made over $20.00 a week in the store, and, after
paying up all his debts, he had less than half the money he had
originally put into the business.
"I'd have been much better off clerking for some one else," he had told
the Mater, "for I would have saved a little money. As it is, here I am,
three score and ten, and, if I live two years more, I'll have to go to
the poorhouse, I suppose."
Old Dorman had made me think pretty seriously when he got out. I was
wondering how many more small storekeepers were in Dorman's position;
how many of them had bungled along from year to year, making a bare
existence; I hoped I could do better than that! It had made me feel the
need of not only keeping up-to-date, but up-to-to-morrow in business
ideas. I remembered what Barker, the big hardware man in Boston, had
said to me when I asked him why there were so many little stores, after
he had mentioned that there were a lot of little stores which were not
represented in the association.
"The reason," he returned, with a sad shake of his head, "is that the
men who run them are little. They wear blinkers all their lives. Their
outlook is extremely narrow. They never grasp what is going on around
them. They don't keep up to date in their ideas and methods of doing
business. They never grow, but remain little all their lives."
But I started in to tell what it was that Stigler did. That afternoon,
to my surprise, I saw him in Dorman's empty store with a carpenter,
measuring the floor space. When he came out I was on the doorstep
bidding good-by to Betty, who had dropped into the store to remind me
that I was to take home some cheap kitchen knives.
"Hello, Black," called Stigler, as he came out of the store. At the same
time his lips gave that contemptuous curl which always got under my
epidermis.
"Hello, yourself, Stigler," I replied.
"Well," he said, stopping for a minute in front of me, "you and me's
going to be pretty close neighbors, Black, ain't we?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I've just rented old Dorman's store. You know, I think there's room in
this town for a good five-and-ten-cent store, specializing on kitchen
goods. This looked like a good location to me, so I'm just going to try
it out. Open up the first of the month."
"Fine," I said. "Good luck to you!" putting as much heartiness into my
tone as I could. And then I went into the store before my rage, and let
me say, anxiety, should show themselves to Stigler.
"Gee whitakins!" I thought. "A five-and-ten-cent store, next door to me,
specializing in kitchen goods, and run by Stigler!"
I knew, without his saying a word about it, that he was opening that
store with the money he had just inherited from a brother out West, and
that he was doing it just to try "to run me off my feet," as he had
expressed it before.
I think I did the best thing I could possibly have done under the
circumstances, for I went right over to Barlow's. Barlow had told me
repeatedly that, any time I needed help, I should go right to him. I
certainly felt that I needed the advice of an old war-horse like he was.
Somehow the fact that he was a bit old-fashioned and staid in his ways
made him appear a rock of comfort to me.
I told him the whole story, and he certainly looked grave.
"What can I do?" I asked anxiously. "I haven't the money to fight him.
He is cutting into my profits very much as it is. Would you advise me to
make a big display of five-and-ten-cent goods before he has a chance to
open the store?"
"When is he going to get started?"
"Well, he said he was going to open by the first of the month."
I think for five minutes Barlow said nothing, but just see-sawed
backward and forward on his swivel chair.
"What ratio would cheap kitchen goods bear to your total sales?" he
finally asked.
"I don't know what you mean."
"I mean, suppose you sell a hundred dollars' worth of goods, how many
dollars' worth of that would be in five- ten- and fifteen-cent
articles?"
"I can't tell you that."
"Surely you have some idea as to whether the cheap goods are the ones
that sell best in your store?"
"Well, I'm sure I don't know."
Some of those old-timers' were pretty shrewd fellows after all. I had
never thought of analyzing my sales in that way.
"Tell you what to do," he said. "Find out what proportion you are
buying of five- ten- and fifteen-cent kitchen goods, and how much of the
better-class goods."
"What then?" I inquired, still in the dark.
"If your big sales are on the cheaper goods, I would advise you to make
a window display of half cheap and half good articles. Put a sign in the
window to the effect that you have cheap articles to sell, and good ones
to use. If you find your sales are mostly on the better-class goods, I
would advise you to start an educational advertising campaign, if you
can afford it."
"What is an educational advertising campaign?"
"It means advertising the better-class goods and giving reasons and
facts why they are better than the cheaper ones. Advertise that you have
the low-priced articles, but, if they want the cheapest, the _best_ is
the cheapest in the end. For instance, here is a ten-cent Dover
egg-beater. I have one here, a glass affair, which sells at a dollar.
Actually, I am selling almost as many of the dollar egg-beaters as I do
of the ten-cent ones."
"Why?"
"Because I show them that the ten-cent egg-beaters cannot last very
long--they can't expect a ten-cent article to do that--but this glass
one will last indefinitely; it is more sanitary; the tinning on it is
very heavy and it won't rust; it is cleaner, more serviceable, easier to
work," and then he gave me half a dozen more facts about that dollar
egg-beater which I would never have thought of. "If you were buying an
egg-beater," he continued with a smile, "which would you buy now?"
"Buy the best one unquestionably, because I can see, after what you
have told me, that the other isn't to be compared with it!"
"Exactly. And if you tell those facts to your trade, they will buy the
better article in just the same way."
"Then, if I am selling more of the better-class goods than the cheaper
ones, you would advise me to give Stigler the cheap business--give up
the fight for it?"
"No," he returned with a smile. "Don't give up the fight, but fight him
in a way that will hurt him most. That is, to educate the people away
from the cheap goods."
"I see! Kind o' put him out of business by killing the demand for his
goods!"
"That's the idea, and it sounds easy if you say it quickly. Candidly,"
he said, "I don't think it will hurt your business much. I wouldn't,
personally, mind another hardware store opening next to me, particularly
if they played the game according to Hoyle."
"But Stigler won't do it!" I cried.
Betty agreed with Barlow that the thing to do was to try to develop the
sale for the better-class articles. "For," said she, "if a woman buys a
ten-cent egg-beater, you make three cents profit on it. If she buys a
dollar egg-beater, you make over thirty cents profit on it, and the sale
of one of those dollar articles is about equal to a dozen of the cheap
ones."
"By Jove, you're right!" I exclaimed. "Perhaps Stigler's latest move to
'run me off my feet' may be the petard which will hoist him off his own;
at any rate, as regards his five-and-ten-cent venture."
Naturally, I could think of nothing but Stigler and five-and-ten-cent
competition, and finally I had an idea. This idea was awfully
simple--unless it proved to be simply awful.
There were in Farmdale about a dozen stores to rent. I had no thought of
renting them; but I was going to see the landlords of those places and
see what they would charge me to rent the _windows_ for a week! and then
I'd ask Barlow to let me hire his men for an evening to trim each of
those windows with the better-class kitchen goods, and then I'd put a
big sign in each window something like this: "If you want kitchen goods
that wear, you'll find them at Dawson Black's." I'd have smart little
talking signs worked up and put on the goods, saying why they were
better than cheap articles, and asking customers to come to my store at
32 Hill Street, and we would demonstrate why it paid to get the best.
"It pays to get the best." That was to be the slogan, and I would print
it on the bottom of all price tickets and talking signs!
I began to feel rather pleased that Stigler was starting that
five-and-ten-cent store next to me! It seemed to have shaken me into
action. I believed that, with a good window display in those empty
stores for a week, I could work up a lot of business and get a lot of
valuable publicity into the bargain.
When I mentioned the idea to Betty, she didn't say anything for a few
seconds, and then she said very demurely:
"Dawson, you can have two more buckwheat cakes this morning."