Retail business

“ One of the most promising fields for American business enterprise I believe to be the organization of retail distribution, which, among other economies, can rid itself of the expense of solicitation. We have already great bazaars which combine the variety of a country store by assembling under one roof the special departments of ordinary city warehouses: is it not possible to organize for such marts stated circles of customers, on whose steady trade the proprietors can rely—circles sufficiently large for adequate support, independently of showy premises or other advertisement? ”

“ In England, the chief type of all these characteristics, there is a perpetual growth not only of large manufacturing establishments, but also, wherever a sufficient number of purchasers are assembled, of shops and warehouses for conducting retail business on a large scale. ”

“ RELATION OF THE MAN TO HIS JOB SERVICE Why is it that of two salesmen working together in the same store, selling the same goods, at the same prices and under the same conditions, one regularly books twice as much business as the other? ”

“ Once the merchant has opened his store or shop and purchased his goods he seeks to establish trade relations with as many individual customers as he can attract. Mercantile business is carried on in two kinds of stores, those which supply one kind of goods in wholesale or retail quantities, like groceries or dry goods, and those which maintain numerous departments for different kinds of manufactured goods. ”

“ Service and not self is the basis on which the success of present-day business is built. The salesman who has set a high standard for himself will 179use P.M.’s in the proper way—as an incentive to learn the stock and to improve the quality of his own work. The broadest minds in the retail merchandising field will tell you that the most capable salesman will sell, first, the goods that have been in stock the longest, discontinued or broken styles and the higher grades of merchandise—whenever these goods will properly serve to satisfy the purchaser. ”

“ THE BLACK HARDWARE STORE
32 Hill Street, Farmdale
[Pg 259]
A well-known business man once said that salesmanship "is selling goods, that won't come back, to customers—who will."
It requires more than salesmanship to do this—it also requires buymanship and service.
We realize this. We know that every purchase you make in our store must have service with it.
Service—good service—is supplying your needs in the best, quickest, and most economical way.
So we start by buying right. ”

“ The general retail merchant is compelled to transact business with a great number of wholesale dealers, to whom he pays cash in hand, or agrees to pay it at some future period, say, in four, six, nine, or twelve months. ”

“ Some of the important characteristics of retail trade establishments are: the establishment is usually a place of business and is engaged in activities to attract the general public to buy; the establishment buys or receives merchandise as well as sells; the establishment may process its products, but such processing is incidental or subordinate to selling; the establishment is considered as retail in the trade; and the establishment sells to customers for personal or household use. ”

“ And if he steps off the side of a ditch the natural law operates and theory proves to be a fact. Business today is a science. It is governed by principles that are as unfailing as the sun. The Course presents the principles of scientific retail shoe selling. These are the most practical things in business.
THE SALESMAN’S PLACE In the whole scheme of merchandising, from the gathering of raw materials to the delivery of the finished article in the customer’s hands, no job is more important than that of the retail salesman. ”

“ A series of follow-up letters should also be used and lists of the people you want to reach are sometimes as useful, and occasionally more so, in bringing results [174] as advertising. In fact every art and device known to the system of business should be freely used where there are no middlemen.
Selling Through the Trade.—The older plan for a large manufacturer to dispose of his goods is through the retail stores, but this is a more costly and a harder way than by the direct method of reaching the consumer. ”

“ At the beginning we can make assertion that in the entire history of retail selling no more ingenious scheme has been devised for the orderly and rapid movement of goods in and out of a department-store. ”

“ The necessary theoretical matter is presented by means of illustrations taken from actual experiences of merchants. Reality without minute detail is the spirit of the work. Particular forms of retailing—chain stores, department stores, and so on—are not mentioned in the treatise. Location, organization, accounting, buying, sales, and pricing, the factors whose management means success or failure in any retail establishment, large or small, receive thorough treatment. ”

“ We'll display the best quality goods that we can, so as to avoid any attempt at competition with them, but we'll make our store so bright that every one going to their store for bargains will be impressed with our up-to-dateness. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The first step in this direction will be the establishment of Retail Stores for the purpose of supplying all national and municipal employees with the necessaries of life at the lowest possible prices. ”

“ The Administrator proposed, so far as immediately relevant, to define a retail establishment as one deriving 75% of its income from retail sales and then to define as retail sales those made to private individuals for personal or family consumption, sales of the same items to any other customer if not for resale and if similar in type and quantity, and sales to farmers of goods of the type and quantity used on the ordinary farm. ”

“ In four fifths of these great retail stores, the discovery that the purchaser is an American or an Englishman, and a stranger, is a signal for increasing the regular price of every article he desires to purchase ”

“ The wholesale operations indeed are everywhere carried on by large capitals, where such exist; but the retail dealings, which collectively occupy a very great amount of capital, are sometimes conducted in small shops, chiefly by the personal exertions of the dealers themselves, with their families, and perhaps an apprentice or two ”

“ On every article sold there is first of all the profit of the manufacturer, then of the wholesale dealer, and finally of the retailer. There is commonly a fourth, that of the freighter. If you keep a retail store, you must pay the man who makes the goods, the man who transports the goods, and the man who keeps the goods in large stock, and all this leaves you only a small margin of profit. ”

“ Retail dealers, selling the merchandise of others at prices prevailing at particular localities and times shall hand over to the wholesale dealers as much of the sale proceeds and profit as is realised by them. ”

“ And this is to make a general stay that there may be no retailer occupy the feat of Merchant Adventurers, but only to keep him, and to live upon his retail; and likewise the Merchant Adventurer to occupy his feat only, and to touch no retail, for divers considerations of damage, as doth daily ensue thereof; and, for an example, the retailer comes over with the commodities of our realm, which, if a cannot sell them at his price, then a falls to bartering of them for silks and such like merchandise, and careth not to win by his cloth, for that a is sure to win by the retail of his silks. ”

“ This want, then, creates a class of retail-traders in our State. Is not 'retailer' the term which is applied to those who sit in the market-place engaged in buying and selling, while those who wander from one city to another are called merchants? ”

“ The retail tradesman of the towns, for example—once a fairly homogeneous class throughout Europe—expands here into vast store companies, and dwindles there to be an agent or collector, seeks employment or topples outright into the abyss. ”

“ The various retail trades, in the cities and larger towns of all civilized countries, are accordingly being rapidly superseded by vast and skillfully organized establishments—and in Great Britain and Europe by co-operative associations which can sell at little over wholesale prices a great variety of merchandise—dry-goods, manufactures of leather, books, stationery, furs, ready-made clothing, hats and caps, and sometimes groceries and hardware—and at the same time give their customers far greater conveniences than can be offered by the ordinary shopkeeper or tradesman. ”

“ We, however, who are primarily interested in the shop, are apt to forget that success, instead of hinging upon shop management, depends in many cases mainly upon other elements, namely,—the location of the company, its financial strength and ability, the efficiency of its business and sales departments, its engineering ability, the superiority of its plant and equipment, or the protection afforded either by patents, combination, location or other partial monopoly. ”

“ A customer may come in for one item. You want him to buy two or three or a half a dozen. The easier you make it for him, the less he has to cross and recross the store to complete his purchases—the more goods you will sell him.
“What you want—what every merchant wants—and what few have—is a practical, natural selling arrangement of the goods.
“The invention of a practical wardrobe merely made the right plan possible.
“Our business is to suggest the plan and fit the wardrobe arrangement to the needs of a store.
“Every clothing store has its own individuality. ”

“ As mechanics are obliged to keep exactly each to his several line, so must shopkeepers confine themselves to their proper articles in trade, and under no pretence must the manufacturer presume to open magazines, that he may sell by retail. ”

“ Such efficiency pays. The Macy folk who come to use it regularly soon find themselves advancing to responsible and highly-paid positions.
It is interesting to follow the career of a sales slip [Pg 179] from the time it is made out—when the sale is made—until the time that it ceases to function. Here is one of the most important items in the mechanism of a large retail store. It is an essential unit of a carefully developed system to keep track of sales, from the minute that they are made until they are finally delivered and audited. ”

“ We draw such fine distinctions between the wholesale and retail traders that our cotton-spinners, calico-makers, and general merchants seem to think that they belong to a totally different sphere, from which they look down on the lady who has had sufficient brains, capital, and courage to open a shop. ”

“ On the other hand, large manufacturers in many trades (of which the boot trade is an example which must have come under the notice of every reader) are tending to open retail shops of their own in favourable localities, so as to obtain the retailer’s commission as well as the manufacturer’s profit. Evidently these large manufacturer-shopkeepers are more likely to be extensive advertisers than small one-shop retailers. ”

“ For a mercer to set up now in Paternoster Row, or a woollen-draper in St Paul's Churchyard, the one among the sempstresses, and the other among the chair-makers, would be the same thing as for a country shopkeeper not to set up in or near the market-place. [15]
The place, therefore, is to be prudently chosen by the retailer, when he first begins his business, that he may put himself in the way of business; and then, with God's blessing, and his own care, he may expect his share of trade with his neighbours. ”

“ Without belittling any of these things it is safe to say that a goodly share of success in all retail selling is based upon the policy of considering each customer, first of all as a fellow human being, and of backing this up with a genuine effort to serve him well. ”

“ The principal necessaries for the support of a workman and his family are few in number, and are usually purchased by him in small quantities weekly. Upon such quantities, sold by the retail dealer, a large profit is generally made; and if the article is one whose quality, like that of tea, is not readily estimated, then a great additional gain is made by the retail dealer selling an inferior article. ”

“ The wholesale jobbers of course advance the price, and in the retail stores they are higher yet; so that each tradesman through whose hands they pass has his trifle of profit in helping to shoe the feet of the doll-people. They retail from a dollar and a dollar and a quarter a dozen, to three dollars and seventy-five cents, according to the style. ”

“ Nearly all the best shops in the retail trade are in this street, some of them comparable to the richest of London and Paris, and the whole affording means for every device of elegant decoration and boundless expenditure. ”

“ There are some manufacturing companies today that have built up such a steady demand for their goods that the salesman supplying the retailer is often required simply to look over the dealer’s shelves to see what is needed to make up the complete stock, make out his order for the required goods and have it signed by the retailer. ”