A Man of Samples. Something about the men he met "On the Road" Part 12

"First decide on a fair retail price. Every article must first be judged on this basis. It is not 'What will the jobber pay for this?'

that decides the cost of goods, but 'What will this retail at?' Having decided this, then settle on a discount from this price that will pay the retailer a fair profit, and in quoting prices to the retail trade stick pretty close to this. Then the jobber should have a margin of 15 per cent. at least, and yet be able to sell retailers at my price."

"But suppose the goods will not allow all this."

"They must allow it if they are to be handled by the trade in a regular way, and they will always allow it if proportioned aright; but what I complain of is that so many manufacturers are unable to comprehend the jobber's position. Here is a sheep-shear that is advertised to consumers at $1.25 per pair; the maker says the lowest he can sell at and make a small margin is $8 per dozen. There is a good margin between $8, factory price, and $15, consumer's price, but how is it divided? A retailer is quoted the goods at $8.65 and the jobber at $8. Don't you see that common sense would say $10 to the retailer and $8 to the jobber? If the jobber wants to sell at less than $10 let him do so (he is sure to do it), but the manufacturer should not."

"Some houses ignore the jobbers altogether; what would you do with them?"

"They are all right; I have no fault to find with them; I can meet all of such compet.i.tion, and without worrying. No factory can handle my trade so cheaply as I can. A great deal of my trade no factory can reach. Salesmen get higher salaries from the factories than we pay.

They only get the trade they drum; there is very little of mail orders from the small trade sent East; what they need they want quickly. Both Russell & Erwin and Sargent & Co. have drummed the retail trade for years, but they have done jobbers no harm, and of late are very anxious to get the jobbing trade. I don't fear the drummers from the factories, but I do dread the low quotations they scatter around, because I must meet their figures."

Mr. s.h.i.+vely seemed pleased at having a good listener, and had talked as if enjoying himself. While I was very much interested in his views, still it is probable I should have acted just the same even if I had cared nothing about what he said. No higher compliment is paid to a man than to place him over you as your teacher. I left him after getting a fair order from him, and pa.s.sed into a large retail store.

That undefined line between the large retailer and the small jobber is a delicate one on which to tread. It is rarely that a retailer will buy of his home jobbers. Every jobber will sell more or less at retail; will tread on the toes of his retail neighbor, and the latter has a special desire to buy as low as the jobber does. Much of his stock is bought at such prices; on a large part he is a.s.sured by the salesman that he is getting as good prices as the largest jobber in the land. If one is not direct from headquarters it is doubtful ground to walk on, but it has to be taken care of.

I handed my card to the man whose face seemed to me to show authority and owners.h.i.+p, and I was not mistaken.

"Guns!" said he, "we don't handle guns."

"But you do revolvers and cartridges." I had seen them in the show-case.

"Yes, but we don't sell them. The jobbing houses are retailing at wholesale prices, and we poor retailers stand no chance."

"You must retail at wholesale prices, too. You can buy about as close as they do, and you can do retail business as cheaply as they can."

"Yes, but don't you see, no matter what our prices are they are retail prices, and for the same reason their's are wholesale; the idiotic public loves to be fooled, and will fool itself if no one else takes the job. What are cartridges worth?"

"Two dollars and ten cents per 1,000 for 22s."

"Why, I can buy here in town for that!"

"I presume you can; we make no money on cartridges; neither do the jobbers here or anywhere else."

"Well, if you can't beat the houses here, how do you expect to sell goods?"

"Oh, cartridges are but one item in a very long list, and, profit or no profit, people must have them."

I always expect a retailer to tell me that I must beat his home jobber, or he will not buy of me. But I know that this is not often true. He will not buy of the home jobbers at the same price, for he feels that he is building up his compet.i.tor. I have seen a great many jobbers who had spent time and money trying to get control of all the trade in their own city, but I never saw one who did not finally give up in disgust. It is not human nature to be willing to help build up a man who is in any way your compet.i.tor, and often you would rather pay a trifle more elsewhere than buy of him. This may not be "business,"

but it is human nature, and there are many places where the latter is by far the stronger.

I undid my sample roll and showed my revolver samples to Mr. R. Almost every revolver reminded him of something, and I listened to his stories with the interest of a man who wanted an order.

"There is no trade in the world so mean as this," said he. "People come in here for a revolver, and I am almost sure they mean mischief with it. What am I to do? My refusal to sell one will not prevent their getting it, yet I hate to sell to them. Of course a large majority of those I sell are sold to people whom I know, and I know they buy them for proper use. But a woman will slip in here and slyly ask for a revolver, and I am wondering if she is going to commit murder or suicide. Many a time a man looks so woe begone as he buys a pistol that I make some excuse to keep him from loading it here for fear he will blow out his brains right in the store."

"Did anything like that ever happen with you?"

"No, not with me, but it has happened. I read of a man going into a gun store, buying a revolver, asking the clerk to load it (doing it all calmly), and then placing it at his temple and falling down dead.

I believe I would go crazy if such a thing were to happen in my store, and I always worry more or less for fear it may. It's a mean business at the best; I wish there were no revolvers made. What do you get for this?"

"Two eighty-five."

"Well, send us six."

I sold him a fair bill, and then spent the afternoon trying to sell two other large retailers, but without success. One of the men was snappish, the other good-natured but full of goods. I did want, very badly, to get a little order out of them, but when I went to supper I had nothing from them. After supper I went down to the cross-grained man's store determined to get so well acquainted with him that I could meet him again under different auspices.

He looked at me as if he expected to be pestered in some new spot, but I put him at rest by saying I had a little time to lounge and thought I could do it there. At this he dropped some of his frowns and began to be sociable. We talked until I was sure it was long after his shutting-up time, so I bade him good night, saying I was going off in the night.

"Don't you ever drink a gla.s.s of beer or wine?" he asked.

"Try me!"

"All right; let us lock up and go down the street a block."

CHAPTER XIV.

I think a merchant who does not want to buy usually feels uneasy to have a traveling man about the store. He keeps up all the barriers that he can, so that he shall not be led farther than he intends to go. If he becomes very friendly it may be all the harder for him to say "no" by and by, so he keeps up an uncomfortable stiffness and is glad to see the salesman go. I have seen this, or thought I saw it, often and often in my own case. I could not get the dealer to be friendly with me while I was in his store, but perhaps I met him in the hotel and found him cordial and sociable.

The retail dealer who had invited me to take a gla.s.s of beer with him had been rather stiff in his own store, but the moment he turned the key in the lock he seemed to throw away his coldness and became very talkative. We sat down at a table and our beer was brought.

I doubt if any traveling man ever became a drunkard, because of the drinking necessary to be done among his customers. A little of it appears to be really necessary. But this little would lead no one to excess. The men who drink to excess are those who patronize bars with other traveling men, and who drink alone. The temptation is great.

Every hotel has its bar; all introductions and intimacies have to be sealed with a drink, and the man who does not feel bright, or fancies he does not, has a row of bright bottles beckoning to him to "brace up" with a gla.s.s of their contents.

I do not wonder that the pulpits and all thoughtful people cry out against the drinking of liquor. Every traveling man's experience, the tales he could tell of the financial and moral ruin of men from drinking, and men who are usually the most intelligent and who ought to be the most influential, are all in the line of the injunction to taste not the accursed stuff. I say this after years of experience; I felt it on my first trip, but I was so anxious to ingratiate myself into the good graces of every man I wanted to sell to that I drank with customers when asked, and when it seemed wise invited them to indulge with me.

Do you say that the foolishness of this was that I must continue it each trip and do more each time? No, you are not correct. I had less occasion for it the next and each succeeding trip. I was able to meet the men on a different footing after the first trip, and I had but little use for liquor as an engine to help business.

A man must needs, too, be very cautious in inviting men to indulge. If it is done in any way so that it appears to be to help make sales it will do more harm than good. A certain cla.s.s of traveling men will invite a merchant to go out and get a drink as if they were offering him a new paper collar, or to pay for his having his boots blacked.

Their manner seems to say, "I must buy you a drink and then I'm going to stick you on an order." They disgust where they expected to please.

Yet, as I have said before, men seem to come close together over a gla.s.s of beer. My friend had positively refused to buy a dollar's worth from me, and I had put him down as rather a surly fellow, but as we sat there over our beer he chatted about himself, his business, and his partner, as if we were old friends.

"I have been seventeen years in trade," said he, "and we have been tolerably successful. I began with $1,500, and I suppose I am worth $35,000, but I work fourteen hours a day, and I have to carry all the responsibility on my shoulders. My partner waits on customers when he is in the store, but when he wants to go out driving or to go anywhere else, he goes. I never let him do anything but he makes a bull. He contracted for advertising the other day, $300 worth, in a paper that will never do us three cents' worth of good. We have the meanest kind of compet.i.tion here; every wholesale house retails, too, and retails a good many goods at wholesale prices. They buy in larger quant.i.ties than we do, and of course can buy cheaper, and they look upon their retail profit as so much clear gain. I am tired of the business, and if I could sell out I would get into the jobbing trade."

There it was. The man who wants to sell out is one of the most numerous men that exist. But it was my business then, and it has always been my business since, to listen sympathetically to all such tales, and to promise to have an eye out for any possible purchaser.

"We don't do much in your line," he continued, "because men don't come to a stove store to buy revolvers, but if I don't sell out I'm going to do some wholesaling, and see if I can't eventually work up into wholesale exclusively."

This was a much more promising opening for me, and I led his fancy over a bed of roses to the not distant day when he might put up that fraudulent sign--"No goods at retail." And I was reminded of a very cheap pistol that we had that I would sell him at 52 cents, which he could job to any country dealer at 75 cents. I don't know if it was the beer or my eloquence, but I sold him fifty then and there, and added some other goods to the sale, so that my evening was not wholly wasted.

I saw him not long ago. He is still retailing at the old stand and still grumbling about his partner, but we have been the best of friends since our first evening together.

As I ate my breakfast the next morning I overheard two men at my table talk about trade, and I quietly listened.

"It only takes a little thing to help out a line of goods or to kill them," said one. "Nimick & Brittan got out that burglar-proof attachment on their locks and just kept themselves going by it."