Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1914-04-23
EDITOR

many problems among thOughtless printers and
Il th0ughtless public but it represents stand
ard of efficiency, and a fair return on labor,
material and capital invested. Consequently it
cannot fail to succeed
In the city of Los Angeles the standard costing
system is very generally in use. This is partly
due to the excellence of the system and much
more to the fact that the printers are thorough
community footballs A typical demonstration
IF how it works is furnished in a recent Los An.
seles journal which publishes the following let
ter. We commend it's perusal to the men of this
town who spend money like drunken sailors
when engaged in some merchandising or cont
mission house enterprise, but pay fve-dOllar-
a-day man to run about town getting fifteen
cent quotations on d0llarandaha printing
obs:
Dear Sir: We wish to compliment you your
ability to determine the correct price of piece of
printing. Your ability must have been gained by
great many years Of experience in the printing
20 years and freely admit that we cannot cor
recty Judge the price of any job until in
our plant Our cost system gives us the accurate
cost of every job that goes through Office, and
we depend absolutely on it.
THE printers of Los Angeles meet once a month
for educational purposes, and am sure they would
be pleased to extend invitation you address
them at one of our regular meetings, as /
fdent you could enlghten ali.
I'VE showed you cost sheet, and every
toner Is gladly shown the cost sheet any of his
work If you prove that 1t cost us cent Tess,
we will gladly receipt invoice. by such proof
We would be able to learn something that would be
worth much more to US than the amount of the bill
rendered. 49, H. L. .~-..--e. .-.~...
s'You say cost sheet means nothing whatever
to you, and that you consider it poor argument on
our part to try to impress with the fact That
even dropped our profit on the job. We would hate
to think that you guess at the selling price of your
merchandise, without knowing what it cost YOU and
as for showing customers the cost of goods, we
note that you, well other merchants, always
mark cost with characters, 50 that your customers
have idea of the profits you make.
1t would be interesting to the writer to know
Just what the $4,000 suit his wife recently purchased
from your store cost you. In this connection
might say that we have spent $500 with you for
every dollar that you have paid for printing We
now hesitate to make further purchases from your
store for your selling price is figured according to
the way you estimated printing. We know
you must be losing money each article sold, and
We would dislike to be party to such transaction.
question you overlooked one important operation,
that of folding Perhaps in your printing experience
folding costs nothing This would be good point
to bring out in your talk at the printers meeting.
In conclusion wish to state that long
we continue to do printing; we viii invoice accord
ing to our cost, determined by system that has
been proven correct not only here but all the
United States. Some printers in Los Angeles may
perhaps do your printing at any price you wish to
dictate, simply because they don't know what their
PRODUCTS costing them"