Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1902 — MR A. D. VERTISER [ARTICLE]

MR A. D. VERTISER

Talks to Rensselaer Business Firms on a Subject of Interest to Them. 4 Have you got all the business you can attend to? Would you attempt to secure more if a good opportunity presented itself? In this article, I’m going to give you a few examples of what advertising has done right here at home. These parties, you will recognize immediately and from their sales and efforts you’ll know they are not one of the I. M. SATISFIED & Co. Grocers, but are pushers. They have made money and are talked about by every man, woman or child in this county. In each instance these successful firms were in the same deplorable condition you are now. So—why don’t you wake up—look at your principal competitor and see what a business he has—not only on Saturday, but on every other day. Now you know or think you know —that you sell your good goods just as cheaply as he does and another thing you wouldn’t wait five seconds to tell one of your customers, that very thing if he happened to stop in your store. Now would you? This strong competitor didn’t always have such a large trade did he? No—be started in a smaller and dirtier shop than you have now, but he didn’t stay there or have that “I Am Satisfied & Company” way, but hustled, spent $25 and run chances on it bringing back SSO. Well I guess it did. At any rate where he used to spend $25 he now spends $75. That $25 was spent for advertising and was worded and arranged in a manner that almost every man in this county read it. They probably didn’t believe all of it—but they couldn’t kelp but believe a part of it and the other part they went to his store to find out if it was true. While they were there they bought some goods. So you see by advertising he had already secured a little trade which ordinarily you would nave received. Now be honest —couldn’t you, just as easily, start with a small, truthful ad and eventually secure the trade of some of yonr competitors. You probably couldn’t get any of this “powerful competitor’s’’ trade but you could pull from other small stores. Of course if you are satisfied with a mere living and don’t want any more business—alright. But, if you think that way you had better quit right now and go to work on the street. You can make an ordinary living there. Here’s another example of what hustling, persistent, advertising has done.

In a little one horse town, not over fine miles north of here, is a firm who, five years ago didn’t have enough business to keep a ten year old boy real busy. They woke up—younger member of the firm took charge of things and did what caused the senior partner (or one that furnished the coin) to look aghast and say “Go slow, my boy.” The first thing the boy did was to have 500 full page circulars printed announcing the fact that on January Ist they would start business on a cash basis and sell only for cash, at small profits. Just think—such a radical change—from what had been a long time credit business to a strictly cash plan. You would think they had caused every old customer to quit—but they didn’t. Why? Because the young partner told why they changed—the good it would do for both customer and them—made their prices lower—sold more goods and in the end only lost one customer and he didn’t Amount to anything hAnanse he had the use of about SBS of their money for ten months out of every year. The whole substance of the matter is—they were successful in their venture and today are doing three times the business and with a better class of people too. What we want to do is to show you that advertising pays if you enter into it in the right spirit. It’S Up to you no#.

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