The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1898-05-11
THE TOY BUYER ABROAD.


| Some of the Interesting Features of His
Work Ii Europe.
The professional buyer going to
Europe to purchase gooGs travels ON
the best boats-and often on the
same boas, which he finds familiar
and comfortable. 1t may be that he
knows the hotels abroad, in the
countries that he visits, better than
he does those of his own land, and
he may come to have a better ac-
quaintance with whole districts in
foreign countries than he does with
like districts of his own, for the sim
pie reason that he visits them regu
larly and frequently. Where he goes
depends on what he is buying.
Whether it is silks or laces or linens
or woolens or leather goods or what
not, he goes to the country where
the things are made to buy them,
whether it is in Russia or in Austria
or France or Ireland. This takes him
to the greatest cities and to smaller
ones, and sometimes into remote
country districts off the lines of rail
roads, where he buys of individual
producers. This would be true, for
example, of the toy buyer.
The buyer for a New York whole
sale toyhouse goes to Germany,
Austria, France and England, and,
it may be, to other European coun
tries, buying in each the productions
peculiar to them. In, Germany he
buys, among other things, certain
kinds of chinaware and dolls and
toys. He buys some things there in
cities, but he buys things as well in
the country, in the houses of the
people who make them. Household
industries exist in Germany in
way that is practically unknown in
this country. Whole families engage
in some work, perhaps the decorat-
ing of toy china or in making dolls
and so on, and whole communities
may be thus engaged.
The toy buyer goes off into these
places and buys at first hand, and,
going to the individual, he gets
things just as he wants them. he
knows what he wants, and he gets
things made that way. A touch, a
single little grace, may make the
difference between a profit and a
loss, between thing that will sell
and one that won't. On doll, for
instance, even>a cheap doll, the IT,
niest bit of lace properly disposed or
the arrangement of the dress or the
colors used or, some slight change in
the face Of the doll, may make the
difference between doll that is dull
and wooden and inanimate and one
that is alive and attractive and sala-
BILE. 1t may be that the buyer sits
down in the dollmaker's home and
explains these things and gets the
dolls made as he wants them. :.
One district in Germany that the
toy buyer visits is in its character
'stics much like the Catskill region
in this state. The buyer makes his
headquarters in town, from which
he drives off up the valleys and
about the mountains to the homes
of the people. He goes there year
after year, and he knows the coun-
try we'll; its landmarks are familiar,
and he knows the people. AS he
drives along the roads he meets boys
who live in the neighborhood and
take off their hats to him as they sa-
lutte him and address him by name.
They know him, and they know
what brings him to the mountains;
his coming may mean an order for
their own families. In recent years
railroads have been built up through
some of these valleys, and it will
probably not be very many years
before most of them will be accessi-
BILE in that manner.
From Germany the toy buyer goes
to Austria. 1t may be that even in
Vienna he buys the products of
household industries in the dwell
ings in which they are made. Here
he may have to climb to the top story
of house to find family workshop.
In France, in Paris, he buys some
things at the home of the makers,
butan increasing proportion he buys
in the warehouses where they are
collected. Pretty much everything
that he gets in London he buys i'll
wholesale establishments. = New
Work Snn
Why lie Winked at His Father.