The Brinkley argus., 1920-01-22

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 up fine. Everybody said the farmers wouldn't come in a store of that kind But they did. We put in rest rooms something they never had before. All the time the advertising was incre0s- ing.
 Last Years Business $500 900.
 l had a younger brother who came into the business at that time. He had developed into great advertis- ing man. At the present time we have large contract with our daily paper for advertising for the year . 1920. We pay 30 cents an inch. We spent last year on that business be- tween $10.0O0 and s1S,OO0 in adver- tising. We sold over half million dollars worth of goods. This year we expect to sell over $600,000 worth. We handle groceries, dry goods, ready-to- wear clothes and the basement is filled with shelf hardware, crockery and dry goods. The advertising method that we pursue out there is the news paper, first, always. l believe the press Is the best medium and cannot be beat. Then the personal letter, then circulars, pamphlets and cata- logues. But the main thing Is the press. In our little country town with a little over 1900 circulation we can put in an ad, for instance, suit sale. We run two every year, one in June and another along in September. We send out a personal letter to our mail Ing list. We have one compiled of only 2,5OO names. Our country is very thinly populated. We have to go out some forty miles to get this number to mail out. I wonder what we would do if we had a 45,000 population right at our door?
 When we are ready to have silk sale, we get out an advertisement tell ing them all about it. Everything is absolutely honest. Our first adyer- tisement tells the people to watch for the page advertisement in the news paper. On the morning this silk sale is to be opened that entire dry goods section Is nothing but silks, spread out, so that when they come in the door there are silks all ready to greet the eye. We have the price tags on them. These sales invariably are success. We not only make money in that department but it llvens up every department of that store.
 There are a great many people who question that method of doing busl- ness. We fS1nd that the consumer used just as much silk and gets in the habit of using more.
 Cares for Flu Victims.
 We run an anniversary sale in the fall. We are also very anxious about the second week in December to move a lot of the merchandise that we ex- pected to move in October and NOvem- Der. We use exactly the same method. And, by the way, all during that epi- demic of the flu we sent sympathet- ic letters to all our customers telling them how to handle it. In our town they had no facilities for the care of patients. We had two large hospitals in the city. Medical authorities took over two stories in the hotels. We advertised that fact through the coun- try. telling them If they were i'll to let us know, the ambulance would come at once; and we gathered people from the surrounding country. We had one doctor to take care of all these people during this time. Then, after 1t was over we talked about the "flu" being over and how fortunate we were to get through with small death loss. We told them we had expected to sell this merchandise and wanted to move 1t and would put a price on it attractive to them. Then a four-page ad came out-an announcement. Where we couldn't reach them that way we mailed it to them. The first day of the sale our receipts were SSG00, and during the seven days we sold a little over S30,O0O worth of merchandise.
 That is the drawing power of that little paper. Of course. in your larger stores here it would be much larger.
 The page ad I am holding is an an nouncement of the fall opening. The name plate I call your attention to. am great believer in name plate that stands out. For instance, when we have a fall opening out in that little town we have live models. We have the best orchestra in town. We serve coffee, cookies and try to make 1t pleasant for them. It is quite a little novelty and if we have a fash ion film, when that film is run, we dis play the same garments on the live models. That seems rather far fetched for a small town but we are trying It out.
 How far can you go on advertising? How much can you spend? find there is no limit even if you cut out some stuff that doesn't bring returns. On our twenty-fourth anniversary l said to an ad man of the newspaper "I want to get out good ad; going to have an anniversary sale on a cer- tain date, and want to make It a good one."
 "Why don't you mke it a good