Don't be a Conundrum

By lack, Dionne

The stuff you sell is considerable of apuzzle-and there is no, sense in making it any harder to figure out than it naturally is.

Even when stored neatly and in an attractive manner it doesn't explain very much abbut itself.

You see, the lumber industry as yet hasn't reached the point where habit makes people see WHAT IT IS and WHAT IT DOES with the same eye.

People buy many raw materials properly-they think, for instance, of bread and cake and biscuits when they buy FLOUR because the millers have been advertising and talking RESULTS and not merely MATERIALS.

And after the lumbermen have stopped talking "just wood" and have talked BARN and SHELF and HOME as long as the flour millers, then the METHOD OF BUYING WOOD and the WOOD BUSINESS itself will be what they should be.

Stop making people guess what you really have for sale.

TELL THEM. SHOW THEM. STOP BEING A CONUNDRUM..

The happy practice of explaining "wood" to the "stranger within your gates" is growing-but you have to get him inside. You are installing display and service and reception rooms-you are stocking and us ing samples and pictures and plan books -you are developing very good powers of salesmanship.

But Friend Dealer, there are still too m any of you who hide all these good thingsthese things for which the public is anxious-behind blank walls

The lumber dealer who permits a solid wall or an unbroken fence to border a street commits a grave disservice in, his town.

Cut display windows into the side of that wall. They will take up very little space -indeed they will not, in one case in a thousand, use any space at all that is now occupied; examine your own sheds and see.

Dress those windows attractively and chaqge them frequently.

Show samples of your stock. Use explanatory cards. A single fresh, bright, lxl1, 6 feet long, with a card saying: "Here is that shelf you want over the sink-36c," will tell just the story the passer-by wants to know.

"Just a board"-that's something of a puzzle; while to guess what lies behind s€V€r*l ty-five or a hundred feet of blank wall-and whether that "something" can be of use to him-and how-and what it costs-

Well, he simply won't bother about trying to guess.

He's too busy these days to guess conundrums.