Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 113, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 May 1918 — MERCHANTS MUST BUILD “BACKFIRE" [ARTICLE]

MERCHANTS MUST BUILD “BACKFIRE"

Can Beat Mall Order Houses at Their Own Game If They Will Do It ADVERTISING ONLY WEAPON Catalogue Concerns Spend Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Annually to Create Demand for Their Merchandise. (Copyright, 1917, Western Newspaper Union.) The forest ranger and the prairie farmer have learned that they must fight with tire. They know that when the all-consuming forest or prairie fires are sweeping toward them their only hope of safety lies in the “back-fire.’’ By kindling and carefully controlling a fire of their own they force the bigger fire to burn itself out, finding no further fuel on which to feed. The merchants of the small cities and towns are learning that in waging their fight for existence they must adopt the tactics of the men of the West. The great mail order houses of the cities are the consuming flames which threaten to wipe out the retail merchants of the small towns unless the latter, realizing their danger, take steps to remove the menace. The retail merchants, as a whole, are beginning to realize that they must fight lire with fire and that to save themselves they must build a “back fire.” Advertising is the weapon with which the mail order houses conduct their warfare on the retail merchants of the small cities and towns. The mail order houses do their advertising through their own catalogues and through certain publications which are known as mail order advertising mediums. A big mail order house spends hundreds of thousands of dollars merely on the preparation and publication of its bulky catalogues. Business Built Upon Advertising. The catalogue houses also spend thousands upon thousands of dollars In advertising in the mail order publications which look for their circulation to the people of the small towns and the rural districts. Advertising in some of these mediums costs as much as from S4O to SBS for a single inch, yet the mail order houses find it profitable to pay these rates. Their business is built upon advertising and if they were denied the use of the mails for their advertising for a single month their business would be destroyed. In advertising, the local merchants find the only weapon with which they can beat the mail order houses at their own game. This does not mean necessarily, only newspaper advertising, although that is the big gun in the battery employed by the successful merchant in his battle for trade. Advertising is a big word and it covers a big field. There is no longer to be found the man who does not believe in advertising. Every merchant believes in advertising of some sort The placing of a display in a show window is advertising. The only difference between that kind of advertising and advertising in a newspaper is that where the one reaches dozens the other reaches hundreds? Attractive window displays are, of course, an important adjunct of any retail store. They serve their purpose but this purpose is only to attract the attention of those who may be passing by the store. There are other forms of advertising, such as personal solicitation, but printed matter must always continue to be the chief reliance of merchants in attracting customers to their stores. Advertising Begets Confidence. The buying public has learned that the store which takes the people into its confidence through its advertising is the one in‘which it may expect to get the best bargains and the most satisfactory treatment It knows that the store which advertises consistently and regularly has the best and most up-to-date stocks because this store sells its goods more rapidly than the one which does not advertise and, therefore, is -not forced to carry over old stock from one season to another. The public knows that the store which advertises can place lower prices on its goods because it turns over its stock oftener than the store which does not advertise and therefore does not have its capital tied up in slow-moving merchandise.

The mall order house does not get its business by merely letting the public know that it has dry goods or hardware or groceries or some other commodity to sell. It creates a demand for its goods by placing in its catalogue attractive pictures and detailed descriptions of the articles which it has to sell. The lure of the mall order catalogue Iles in the fact that the merits, or alleged merits, of the merchandise offered are placed before the prospective purchaser in the most graphic manner. The local retail merchant has the same opportunity to do this that the mail order house has and can do it much more effectively than the mall order house can. The retail merchant can talk to the people of his community through his home newspaper and that is something which the mall order houses as a rule cannot do, for the local newspapers through a sense of loyalty to their communities and their home merchants will not accept the advertising with which the mall order houses would flood them If they had ths opportunity. ‘