Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1899-06-08
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When the small merchant listens for
the first time to the advertising mans
proposition, he seems to regard It
vaguely. He doesn't stop to think that
he Is merely medium between the
sales. counters and public audience of
thousands of readers. After q while
he may become interested enough to
say. II believe In judicious advertis-
ing" Then the advertising man knows
that his vis-a-vis never advertised In
his life. knows nothing about It, and
he realizes that he is up against an
iceberg. He has perhaps felt when he
entered that particular store that the
atmosphere was frozen hard He had
already sized up the merchant sitting
ut his desk, and from the cut of his
lib, thought there was nothing In him.
His Impressions had not been favor
able the first dash out Of the box and
first Impressions are most always good
ones. He wonders II he can ever thaw
this merchant out, and somehow wish
es he hadn't walked dozen blocks
out of his way to see this man, but had
instead gone to the lunch he missed.
Then he begins to get hot under the
collar, but he won't show It. and he
goes for the merchant red-handed,
knowing he is Offering good thing.
"You put these price tags on your
goods to attract attention, don't your"
he asks of the merchant "Of course,
where should put them, In the back
yard" he answered. The advertising
man thinks this reply a little rough;
still it wasn't much rougher than the
question, for couldn't he see that the
cards were there for no other purpose?
Fright where they are" he says, that
is the proper thing to do. There are
merchants who get price cards on the
brain and don't stop to think that no
body sees them unless they happen to
come into the store. They forget that
the shopper at her home, the banker
at his desk, or the workingman at his
fireside, smoking his pipe, Is reading
one of the daily papers and not worry
ing about price cards. They are good
advertisement, after you have attracted
your buyer into your store, but they
are not gilt-edged magnets to get peo-
pie to come In. Great guns! the way
to make money is to get people to come
into your place, isn't it?"
EYES," says the merchant, "but my
neighbor So-and-so on the corner, and
So-and-so next door, take whole pages
in the papers. They attract the peo-
pie to this street, and when they get
here, they see my bargains, and get
the trade without spending money in
the newspapers"
Now here was merchant who clear
ly kept his eye on the main chance. By
his own words, he was getting his
trade at the expense Of his neighbor.
But was he getting 1t?
He had started in business about the
same time as either Of his neighbors
and on the same scale. There was no
evidence that during his ten years
career he had added one inch of floor
or counter space. His work was be-
ginning to sprinkle his hair with gray
threads, and he looked like a man who
eked out an annual profit about equal
to a first-class head salesman's salary
In either of his neighbours stores.
Clearly, he had not accumulated for
tune. One of his neighbours stores now
occupied four floors and workmen were
tearing down walls alongside to take
in a favorable corner to still further
provide for a growing business. The
other neighbor was rated Al In the
commercial agencies and employed
fifty clerks and statesmen. They had
been persistent advertisers-he hadn't.
Somehow the advertising man was
Disguised because this merchant
wouldn't get sociable, and because he
talked in that strain. He knew he had
a good proposition to offer, and he
knew he could help that merchant build
up a fine trade. but he felt discour-
aged at sowing the advertising seed
on such barren ground. While he
would have liked to take that mer-
chants contract for $4,000 lines, know
ing that his newspaper would be Of
great benefit to him, he felt that his
paper could get along without it If the
merchant could.
They talked and talked-that is, the
advertising man did-and then he said
he would have to go, that he would
drop in to see him. or course tina. was
sarcasm. If he were to 60 past that
store every day for year, he wouldn't
drop In to see him, and very likely that
merchant wouldn't miss him. But
some day the merchant would begin to
see that the neighbors' pages of adver-
Using didn't attract trade anywhere
but where 1t belonged; and that still
more buildings were being demolished
to make more room for his neighbors'
increasing trade. Then he would be-
gin to hump himself, and the words of
the advertising man would come back
to him. Then he would thaw out and
strive to get into the bandwagon hard
and fast along side his prosperous
neighbors, and the advertising man
would be indicated.
Don't you think so?
Silence Is not always golden and the
merchant who thinks so, and doesn't
herald his goods in printers ink Is
dense. He can't be hermit and com
pete with his neighbors. No matter
what his line of goods, he can sell more
Of them If he advertises.-San Diego