"You will find," said Martin, "that the Woolton people will make their
store as bright as possible, and I am afraid that ours will look a
little dull in comparison."
When Stigler had had the store fitted up he had had some very powerful
lights put in, but he had never used them much. My store was not any too
bright, although, of course, like him, I used electricity.
"I tell you what we'll do," I said. "We'll have an electrical display in
both windows and, for the first week, we'll try to get a bigger blaze of
light in our windows than they will have. 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."
That is what we decided to do.
Martin had given me his handbill advertising the vacuum cleaners. On the
next page is a copy of it.
LET INVISIBLE HANDS DO YOUR HEAVY CLEANING
Instead of hiring help to clean your carpets, let one
of our PEERLESS ELECTRICAL VACUUM SWEEPERS do it for
you.
PEERLESS ELECTRICAL VACUUM SWEEPERS are quiet,
efficient, and thorough. You don't have to find meals
for them and they never answer back.
If you have electricity in your home hire a PEERLESS
ELECTRICAL VACUUM SWEEPER to clean your rugs.
$2.00 a day--delivered and collected free.
A child can operate them, but they do the work of a
giant.
A special demonstration all next week at
DAWSON BLACK'S HARDWARE STORE
32 Hill St.
"If it's electrical you can get it from us."
I had had Roger Burns around for dinner the previous Sunday. He used to
go to school with Betty and me, so of course when I told Betty that the
New England Hardware Company, for which Roger was working, had made him
manager of its chain store in Farmdale, the first thing she said was
that we must ask him for dinner.
While Betty and the Mater were clearing away the dinner things, I asked
Roger how business was coming along.
"Well," he said, "we knew pretty well what we would do before we came."
"How could you tell?" I asked, laughing.
"We knew how much money we were to invest in Farmdale. We knew how often
we ought to turn over our stock every year. We also knew what our
expenses would be, and what our profits would be."
I couldn't help smiling as I said, "The only thing you didn't know was
whether the people would buy the goods."
"That's where you're wrong," said Roger. "We knew what the people would
buy, because we analyzed the market so thoroughly. We knew just what
kind of goods each class of people bought; and how often they bought
certain kinds of goods. And with our experience in marketing we knew how
to get them into our store."
After Roger had left I thought that over a lot, and believed there was
some truth in what he had said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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