Advertised Goods Change Lumber "Yards" To Stores

Black Sheep Among Retailers Grasp New Idea and Make Up For Lost Time

By C. M. Harrison, in Printers' Ink

"Do you sell builders' hardware?" a Printers' Ink representative asked a hardware dealer in Northfield, Minn., durihg a recent visit to that town.

"No,". he replied, "we used to. but now the lumberman across the street sells it all."

Whv is that ?" ''wny rs tnatr

"Well, he getr gets out among the farmers and learns about the new buildings. About all we can do is to take care of care of the store here."

"Is there much building going on in this section?"

"Very little. In fact, I haven't heard of one new building during the last six weeks."

Going across the street to the lumber dealer, the Printers' fnk man repeated the question.

"Oh, yes," the lumberman replied, "building has been pretty good around here this winter. The weather hasn't been as cold as usual and this has helped. During the last two months we have sold material for fifteen buildings, including three houses. It is only yesterday that I sold a big barn bill."

'There is no inclination here to make any unfriendly comparison between the two dealers, or even to intimate that lumbermen are better merchants than hardware men. The exact opposite is the case in most instances. Go on down the Jefferson Highway a few miles into Faribault and you, can see a hardware store that seems to have all that part of the world licked in builders' supplies as well as in a lot of other things. It all depends upon the man and his ability and inclination to know his trade.

But the Northfield incident is brought out here to illustrate how the lumber dealer, once perhaps the least efficient of all retailers, is now fast becoming a merchant. This Northfield man is more than a dealer in lumber. He sells building materials, taking in a long list of items that never could be found in the old-time lumber yard. His establishment is really a building supply store.

The change has been wrought in his case and in plenty of others, iniluding the Interior Lumber Company of Minneapolis, largely by advertised goods. Advertisers have ii opened up new markets for the lumberman and now have really an alluring opportunity in his further development. In the retail lumber trade there is a most promising outlet for many classifications of advertised merchandise. One reason, to quote again the remark of the Northfield hardware man, is that "the lumber dealer has time to go out among the farmers and the other trade." At least, he does' get out and herein is the difference. Talking with N. S. Coffin, president of the Interior Lumber Company, the writer got a vivid picture of how advertised commodities can be the nucleus of a progressive retail lumber merchandising policy that can multiply sales and net profits.

Prefers Advertised Items

"Whenever we possibly can do so," said Mr. Coffin, "we give an advertised item the preference. Sometimes it may not yield us as much profit on the individual sale, and then again it does. But in any event we obtain enough additional volume from the well-known merchandise to make many times the return that could be had from the other goods.

"We can get results from advertised merchandise because the selling is already largely done for us. If we will ally ourselves properly with the manufacturer's advertising efforts, we find that we have a huge advantage over competi.tors who, handling other classes of goods, have to do all the selling themselves. In other words, we have the start on them and can complete the sale-many sales, in factwhile they are building up the groundwork that they hope will result in business later. They get there eventually. Meanwhile the dealer with the advertised goods gets there many times and eventually leaves his competitors far behind.

"Among the many instances that would go to prove this statement, I now call to mind our experience with the'Red Top'fence posts made by the Red Top Steel Post Company of Chicago. This is an advertised item and has many advantages over the old-fashioned wood post. The cost is about the same, the post lasts forever practically, and a

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W. R. CHAMBERLTN & CO. Matson Bldg., 215 Mar'ket St., San Francisco 266 New Chamber of Commercc Building, Los Angetes MAin 476,4 farmer can place a hundred of them in the time it would take him to dig holes and set in position ten or fifteen wooden posts.

(Continued from Page 10.)

"These 'Red Top' posts are stocked in all our yards-or stores as we prefer to call them. One of our branch managers sold something like 1900 of the posts one year and thought he was doing a pretty good business. But he was not selling the goods at all. He was merely supplying them to people as they called for them, the demand being created entirely by the manufacturer's general advertising. We finally succeded in waking this man up so he got something of an idea of the potential asset we had in this item, advertised as it was. He sent out to his trade advertising matter suppligd by the manufacturer. He and his men talked Red Tob posts to the farmers when they came in. Briefly stated, he added some constructive individual selling effort to the general campaign carried on by the manufacturer. The Eventual result was that instead of selling a few hundred of the posts in a year, his sales last year exceeded 80,000.

"How far would our efforts have taken us if we had been selling an unknown post even though it might have had equal-merit? Presumably we would have got a fair amount oftrusiness, enough, at least, to pay us a reasonable profit onlthe time and effort we put in' But, judging from our ex-

The Quality Arrgle

'lThere is anolher feature to trade-marked advertised items among building essentials that I think manufacturers lay too little pressure upon. This is that the article necessarily has quality. If it were otherwise, the maker would hesitate to place his name upon it. He has too much to lose. The reason the branch manager I have just mentioned did not proceed more energetically in the selling of Red Top posts was that he did not have a real appreciation of the value of the goods and what they mean to the farmer. Somebody had neglected to sell him on that fact.

"In this particu.lar instance, here at headquarters where the buying for that yard is done. we supplied the motive power which resulted in the pleasing sales total. Operators of a chain of retail lumber establishments such as ours, of course, can and do pass along to their branch managefs a knowledge of, and belief in, the goods they sell. But how about the independent dealer who has no big buyer over him ? Unless he is properly sold on the goods as well as on the advertising, he has nobody to set him right, as our man had, and much business is lost as a result. This I believe is something for manufacturers to think about."

The Interior Lumber Company, Mr. Coffin further explained, has made trade-marked merchandise in buifding essentials the central feature of a merchandising : plan whereby it operates a chain of twenty or so building material stores. These, located in the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, are conducted and controlled in detail ,from the company's headquarters in Minneapolis. They ,nre standardizi:d down to a fine point that makes one think of the Woolworth variety stores or the A. & P. grocery stores.

periences in other items, we would not have sold more than one:tenth-if that manv indeed-of the unknown or unnamed post.

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Office buildings, u'arehouses and lumber sheds of all ,the establishments are identical in form and layout, although some necessarily are larger than others. Lumber piles are arranged in the same sequence in all the yards. All other

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