The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1907-09-05
Mail Order Competitions

IS
The following from the Duluth Her.
aid tells the country merchants how
to successfully compete with mail or
der houses:
The combination of the retail mer-
chants of the west and northwest into
an Organization to resist the en-
croachments of the mail order houses
will be valueless unless the merchants
take advantage of the example offered
by the mail order houses and adver-
tise.
The merchants in the cities, like
those in Duluth, suffer no loss from
the competition of the mail order
houses. It is the small merchants in
the small towns. who do not adver-
tise, or who do not advertise properly
when they advertise at all, that suffer
from this competition.
The Central Retailers league is the
organization of the merchants that
has been formed for the purpose of
resisting the competition of the big
mail order houses, and if it really
wants to be of use to it's members, and
to get back the business that the mail
order houses have taken away from
them, it will start campaign of edu-
cation in the art of advertising.
How does the mail order house get
| its business? By advertising. It ad-
vertises skillfully, to make prospec-
tive customers believe that it sells
goods cheaper than the home mer-
| chants do. That many believe this is
| shown by the fact that nearly all of
these houses do a tremendous and
immensely profitable business.
In the meantime, what is the mer-
chant in the small town doing? Either
he does not advertise at all, or in nine
cases out of ten where he does adver-
tise his advertising expense is wasted.
Indeed, a large proportion of these
merchants do not expect to gain any
thing from advertising, but advertise
because they think they ought, as a
matter of charity and public spirit, to
support the local paper. So they put
in plain announcements that they deal
in hardware, groceries, dry goods or
general merchandise-which every
body in town already knows let
it go at that, thereafter complaining
that advertising does no good and
protesting because they have to dole
out the price of their advertisements
in charity to the newspaper.
Such advertising is wasted, in most
cases. What these merchants should
do is to study the methods of the city
dealers, and take a lesson from their
methods of advertising. They may
have on their shelves goods just as
desirable as those of the mail order
houses or more so, and at prices as
low as those of the mail order houses
or even lower, but the people do not
know it unless the fact is advertised.
Advertising is business investment
with rich returns if properly done.
1t is not charity or public spirited
support of local institution.
Most of those that buy from mail
| order houses are fooled, and it is the
fault of the local mountaineering mer-
chants that they are. They must pay
cash for their goods, when they can
get time from the local merchant; they
must wait a couple of weeks for them,
when they can get them at once from
the local merchant: they must pay ex-
press or freight charges, when there
are no such charges to pay on goods
bought at home; their money goes out
of the community never to return,
when if the local merchants are pat
ronized it stays at home.