The Edison phonograph monthly (Jan-Dec 1908)

16 Edison Phonograph Monthly, March, 1908 Dealers, This is Worth Reading The January issue of the Hardware Dealers Magazine contained an article written by B. P. Stone that was of unusual interest, and all that was said in it is quite as interesting to talking machine dealers as to those selling hardware or any other merchandise in competition with mail order or catalogue houses. The article in scathing terms first tells in detail how the catalogue houses succeed in getting a big business, a large part of it coming from under the very noses of local dealers. All of the reasons for their success are known to dealers themselves and need not be repeated here, even if we could spare the space for the purpose. The article then tells in equally plain words how dealers can fight the competition. Part of this refers quite as well to talking machines as to any other line and we reprint it, with the request that all Edison Dealers read it carefully: THE WAY TO BEAT THE GAME. You have viewed the situation with a great deal of dissatisfaction for a long time. You have talked it over with others many a time. Perhaps it has at times alarmed you and you have wondered where the thing was going to stop. It is not going to stop at all. If you want it stopped you will have to get out and put a stop to it yourself. It is all very well to talk the thing over in your conventions, and so on. It is all very well to say that the standard goods must be kept out of the hands of these people. But all this does not hit the situation where it affects you. Do you know how much money is going out of your own town to these same concerns? I will warrant that you will be both surprised and disgusted when you find out. This money belongs at home. It belongs in your town, where every dollar of it will pay a $100 worth of debts or make a hundred dollars' worth of purchases, if it is kept in circulation. The point is how? The answer is: Educate your trade. All the talking you merchants do among yourselves is so much time wasted. It never reaches the correct place. It is not criticism but education which will do the business. Do the thing the way the C. H. does it. Get after them and keep after them. Keep up the fight. It can not be done in a day, or a week, but must be a continuous process, for as soon as you let up a little the C. H. will be after them again. In fact they will keep after them, too, just as they are doing now. Do not try to reform the whole country at once, nor to put the C. H. out of business. Let other sections of the country fight their own battles. You will have enough to do, you and your fellowmerchants, to get the people of your own locality in line. Now for a definite plan. EDUCATE YOUR PEOPLE. The plan is strictly educational. It will do less than no good at all to call the C. H. a pirate and a menace. Nobody cares about the menace part of it. You must educate your people until they can see that there is an actual money saving in buying at home. Then you must add all the other arguments one by one. Keep at this and you can get back your trade and keep it. This cannot be done by you alone. You must have the support and assistance of every business and professional man in your community so far as you can get them together. Remember that this is not a campaign for the good of your business alone. It is to keep the money at home and all should join. In the first place you want the assistance of the local paper or papers. Just here let us ask a question. Have you in the past and are you now giving the right sort of support to the local paper? If not this is the time to commence. Get the paper into the game and give it the right sort of support, both in the way of advertising patronage and otherwise. DO SOME GENEROUS ADVERTISING. What you want to do now is to present to the village, town and farming population all the arguments you can muster in favor of home trade. Use, for this purpose, advertising in the local paper, advertising by circulars and personal appeal. Form a local association or club. This will make concerted action possible and will allow of a much greater spread of your activities as all can contribute toward the cost. Put a standing advertisement in the paper, bearing on this subject, and let it be issued in the name of the club. In addition to this let each one interested insert individual advertisements, but let all of them tend to the same point. Let this be helped out by editorial comment, not once in a while, but in every issue of the paper. The publisher of your local paper will fall in with your plans readily enough, for he depends for success on the general prosperity of the community just as much as you do, and it is a pretty safe bet that he realizes that fact fully as well as you do and possibly a little better. There will be no difficulty about him you may be assured. Every man who owns a foot of real estate in your town should be with you, and will be if the case is properly put. The value of his holding depends on the prosperity of the town. Let one store or factory move out of town and it lessens the value of that holding appreciably. If the business of the community is not going to stay at home, some one will move out. If enough business goes abroad, all of you will move out. Where will the values of the real estate go then? The same is true of the professional men. A town which is no good for business is no good for them. The same is the case with the clerk and the laborer. And if prices and service are equal the farmer would rather trade at home than go abroad, so it is simply a case of showing him that prices and service are a little better at home than abroad. EXTEND YOUR DELIVERY SERVICE. There is another point. It it easy for the farmer on a rural mail route to write a check and send away for what he wants. Make it just as easy for him to get the same stuff from you. Extend your delivery service. Anything which the C. H. can send by mail, you can send by mail just as well. Lay stress on that. Make it