"Modern Lumber Merchant Can Merchandise Specialties Profitably"

By Fred Tomaschke, Advertising Counsel for the Built-In Fixture Co., Berkeley, Cdifornia.

The lumberman of today has a big opportunity to develop much additional business by merchandising building specialties.

Selling lumber is like selling any staple article where necessity is the major factor on which sales rest. One of the greatest factors to be considered in sales promotion is desire. More people are impelled to purchase articles because of desire to possess them, than for any other reason.

Built-in kitchen fixtures are articles that fall under the heading of things we want. Two-by-fours and sheathing and lath and shingles are things the great American purchasing agent-the good housewife, never thinks of unless there is a leak in the roof, a hole in the wall or the house catches fire. When she goes to survey a new house or a model home a's a prospe-tive purchaser, does she inquire about the kind of lumber that was used in building the structure? Does she care whether pine or cedar shingles make the roof covering? Perhaps she should, but that is not the point. The answer is-she does not !

But ninety-ninelvomen out of every hundred will think the orchid colored sink tiles and the black porcelain door handles and the flour bins and drawers and kitchen cabinets are "just adorable". They think of compact, well arranged and well built kitchen fixtures, as something that will give them real pleasure. They survey built-ins with eyes of desire. This desire grows and grows until it is finally satisfied, which means that someone's cash register rings an accompaniment to her fulfilled desires.

And remember, it is the housewife who does the purchasing. Friend husband is passive in his interest and desire when it comes to most of the commodities of life. His desires are not as keen and he usuallv puts out his monev for the things hiswife thinks they-should have for thl home.

Articles, such as built-ins, make a direct appeal to one of the strongest human instincts-the possessive instinct, and when you arouse the possessive instinct of a woman, you have started something that means the expenditure of money. Any married man knows this. It is axiomatic. Ofier for sale the things that women want, the things that arouse their desire, and make money.

Arrtomobile manufacturers learned this fact some years ago. They began to feature beauty, color, convenience and luxurious fitments, instead of mere mechanical adequacy. These things appealed to the feminine heart and aroused the interest which made the purchase of a new car a matter not of necessity, but one in which actual desire overcomes all natural resistance to the business of parting with money. Manufacturers of many other articles took the tip and today every effort is being made to create this desire to buy, in the feminine heart, by featuring color, shape, size and other preference features in stoves, alarm clocks, bath-tubs, sinks, n'ashing machines, carpet cleaners, egg beaters and "what-have-you."

And why has all this change taken place? Because it rings the cash register. Woman wants what she wants when she wants it, and usually she gets it. Built-in fixtures are on her list and well at the top at that, and lumber merchants who display a line of these fixtures and merchandises them with any degree of intelligence, will go a long way toward overcoming the dullness of selling mere staple material which is handicapped by an almost total lack of any "preference feature".

One of the great advantages of the built-in line is that it can be sold as a separate issue from house construction. The very fact that thi housewife can make her old kitchen as modern, convenient and attractive as the one she saw in a magnificent model home, by installing the built-in features she has seen on display orin advertisements, creates a continuous demand for these fixtures and places built-in cabinets in the same class of fast-selling meichandise as- radios, washing machines and mechanica-l refrigera- tors. Why should not the lumberman be the one to make the sale of built-in furniture-display and merchandise this popular specialty-and make the profit?