The New Competition and The Retail Lurnberman

By Jack Dionne

Just read a letter from a retail lumber friend of mine, busrness just to stand on the corner and wait until folks written in most serious vein, and digging into a subject come in, you are quite mistaken. If you think they are not that is certainly heavily laden with direct interest to going direct to your customers and your prospective cusEVERY retail lumberman. It is from C. W. Vaughan, tomers, showing them what they have to offer in the line Manager of The Kiowa Lumber Company, of Shawnee, of SERVICE, then you are doubly wrong. Oklahoma, and the crux of his queries is this: Everywhere these mail order stores go, they are going ..About the time we figure out some way to meet the to merchandise, -intensively, aggressively, intelligently. mail order competition effectively and make some mone, "StaY at home and wait for the customer or the contractor ourselves, here they come right into our community with to come and buy-methods" are not to be found in their their stores, and, as r understand it, they are planning an sales programs. That isn't the way they built their-busiactive house-to-house campaign in each locality in oider ness' on the contrary it was people who did business to find market for their products, and now some Chicago that way that'made the mail order folks rich and powerful. concern in the furniture business comes in offering to build Just what these great chains of mail order stores are a home and furnish it and sell it on small down -asy pay- going to mean to the retail lumber industry will become ments. It appears to me that there is no place in the re- apparent very shortly' we won't be kept in the dark long. tail lumber industry for a lazy man. We have got to wake But we can be perfectly certain that there are to be new up and see what is going on around us. I wish you would and serious developments in retail merchandising. T write me at length, and tell me some of the other new and building industry is going to feel the new competition in revolutionary competition that we are going to be facing, every state the new mail order stores enter' rnstead of and what kind of a lunrberman do you think will be able selling buildings by catalogue, they will be sold man tc to survive? Truln this will be appreciated." man' from plans and pictrlres and sales quotations' They r am not going to try to answer this rumberman,s ques- tions with regard to nelv cornpetition with any degree of not raw materials. And their competition will be Hell. fullness at this time. l'he way things trook we will be Don,t doubt it. busy from now on discussing these new forms of corapetition that have suddenly appeared on the horizon, because

Years ago mail order competition by catalogue had more they are black competitive clouds such as we never saw to do with improving retail lumber merchandising methods before, and the retail lumber business has got to do what than any other one thing' The retail lumber industry imMr. vaughan is doing-face the situation and decide how proved its merchandising because mail order competition to best meet it. forced the issue. The plan books and plan service and

But you can depend upon it that there wiu be considerabrr

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less room in the lumber business f.or lazy men, with.every looming large, may be the means of a further awakening. day that passes. There will be constantly diminishing That an old timey lumber yard will not be able to compete room in the lumber business for the good old "wood yard with a progressive local building store, goes without aigumen." The towns where the lumiber dealeis do not act- ment. ively merchandise their goods, keep in touch with the build- The lumber industry has not viewed with justifiable coning prospects, create business by helping their trade to cern the chain store idea of the mail order houses. But build in newer and interesting ways, and corral the build- in days to come we will probably look back upon this per- ing dollars by intelligence and activity,-those sort of iod as one of the most memorable times in retail lumber places are going to be easy picking for the mail order history. And we will have to solve the problems as they stores. develop.

Of COURSE these mail order stores are going to do "What kind of a lumberman will survive," Mr. Vaughan? house to house canvassing. They are going to learn all Oh, many kinds will survive. But the only kind that will about their sales. prospects by direct contact.-just as the succeed will be the hustling, thinking, working, merchanretailer should have been doing long ago. If you think dising lumberman, who meets the mail order man at his these great new chains of mail order stores are going into own game.