Millwork and Merchandising

Now that the annual meeting of the Millwork Institute of California is history, I would like to make a request to every millwork man in California. Turn to page 48 of the recent July First Birthday Issue of The California Lumber Merchant, and read the article on that page. It concerns YOUR business. It is headed "-Sq1 Sash and Doors Are Different." ft was written by a kid, "Tat" Nicholson, son of that grand old millwork warrior, Ed Nicholson, of Los Angeles. Maybe a lot of you passed it up because it was written by a kid. If so, take this piece of advice, and read it NOW.

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In the old days they said, "What was good enough for father is good enough for me." Old fogyism ! Today the wise son knows that the greatest credit he can do his father is to progress farther than his father did. One of the world's great thinkers said "We are all children in the Kindergarten of God, and there will come after us men who will see things that we cannot." That's progress. Ed Nicholson is one of the greatest living experts at millwork MAKING. But he hasn't the merchandising vision, and this kidof his HAS. Therefore, read the little article he wrote. It is the medicine, cooperatively and coordinately considered, that the millwork business of California is going 'to have to take before it will ever know sustained prosperity. The Lord sends a certain amount of business, folks. So long as you scrap to getyour share of that business, there will never be prosperity. ft won't make any difference how wonderful your goods are, or how splehdid ;rour service. The difterence between that automatic volume that the Lord sends, and the level needed for consistent prosperity is what you have got to CREATE.

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Let me join young Nicholson in saying-"Don't say your business is different." It's YOU that's different. It's your vision that's different. The road to business Hell; the slippery slide to bankruptcy; the life road of the inefficient ; all these paths, and many others, have for their guide posts these same signs in brazen letters,-"My business is different."

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There never was, there is not now, and there never will be, any slogan of business success that compares with these sense-inspired words: "Business is good-I MAKE IT GOOD." And add to that-"And keep it good." And remember this: "On the plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of victory, sat down to wait, and waiting-died." ***

The millwork industry of California is one of the world's very greatest industries, judged from every practical standpoint. Here they have reduced the production of beautiful and wonderful and useful things out of wood to such a science as has not been known before. Things precious and delightful to man and woman in the creation of homes and other desired buildings, they make as have been made nowhere else. They have allied their business with their creative instincts to manufacture these things economically as well as perfectly. The Millwork Institute of California, headed by a man of vision, of character, of intellect, as well as rare ability in the particular work he is doingHank Didesch-has been in the van of this great production work. But production, creation-is as far as the Institute has gone, because the Institute as a group has not been merchandising-minded. Mr. Didesch thinks as young Nicholson thinks in this article I have recommended, but has had his thoughts snowed under plenty of times when he articulated them.

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But this industry is NOT prosperous. So the only thing to do in analyzing the situation is to compare it with the other great industries that are forging ahead, and the difference-the answer to the riddle-jumps up immediately and stares you in the face. These other industries leave NOTHING to chance. They think CREATING A MARKET is far more important than manufacturing goods. The millwork folks think their jobis to work out wonderful cost sheets so that they will know exactly what their goods cost them, and to make the most perfect products their genius can devise. There they stop. Remember, the hen scratches with BOTH feet. What she misses with one. she hits with the other.

If the automolit. p.optJr"l."l"to,.ed like the millwork people,'most of us would still be on foot.