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Edison Phonograph Monthly, Dec, 1908
Store Management
A monthly comment on things Edison dealers have done with a few suggestions on what they should do to increase sales.
HEN this issue of the Phonograph Monthly reaches you there will be about twenty-five days left in which to convince Santa Claus that his one best bet is an Edison Phonograph. We trust that you have put some of the selling suggestions set forth in our Christmas Special into operation. We hope this — our Eleventh Hour Special — will encourage you to continue what you are doing and do more.
There will be more money put in circulation during the next three weeks than in any other three weeks in the year. You want to get your share of this money. Your share isn't any particular percentage. It isn't what you got last year at this time or the year before that. Your share is all you can coax from the pockets of Christmas shoppers by every possible means that the law permits.
It is better to do things at the eleventh hour than not at all. If you have waited until now before introducing the Christmas spirit into your advertising, your windows, your mail matter and your store, you certainly should wait not a day longer.
Don't think because you are an old, established dealer in Phonographs and Records that extra effort on your part is unnecessary.
Don't think because this is the season of spending that all you have to do is pass out the goods with one hand and take in the money with the other.
Though everybody in your community may know who you are, where you are and what you
sell, it is also true that these same people know other dealers in other lines and while you know and we know that there is nothing so acceptable to so many as a Phonograph for a Christmas gift, others don't know it and won't know it unless it is proved to them.
Look about you and see what the jeweler, the book seller, the stationer, the furniture man and the haberdasher is doing to get Christmas money.
These people do business all the year around just as you do; they are well known just as you are ; yet at this time of year they do everything in their power to concentrate the Christmas spending on their stores.
Christmas doesn't call for any special lines of merchandise. People want at Christmas time only those things they want any time — the only difference being that at Christmas time they are better able or at least more willing to buy them.
You would not have to make any special effort to sell a Phonograph during the holiday season to a man or woman who has wanted one all the year.
Your effort is necessary, however, to convince the man who is hesitating between several things that the Phonograph is the best thing he can put his money into.
You undoubtedly believe it is. You know that if you can get such a man into your store you