Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1907 — ROAD TO SUCCESS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ROAD TO SUCCESS

PUBLICITY IS THE MAIL-ORDER MAN’S GREAT WEAPON. MERCHANTS MUST ADVERTISE .: , r: q “Fight Fire with Fire" and the Dol- j lart Now Going Cityward Will Stay in the Home Community. The merchant who'would wage successful warfare against mail-order competition should study mail-order methods. The, same tactics that takes the dollar out of the community will keep it at home. And what are mail-order methods? 1 The keynote of it all may be found In the one word —publicity. The mailorder house advertises. It does not advertise better goods at less money than the home merchant'gives, but it advertises persistently. It puts its proposition before the public constantly. It recognizes no dull season in its campaign for publicity. It never lets “P -7-~ At a gathering in lowa some time ago a mail-order man explained some Of the systetn followed in the campaign of publicity. According to this explanation the mail-order house seeks the line of least resistance in its search for business. Whenever they can find a town in which the merchants are not active advertisers they flood that community with their literature. When they find a town in which the furniture dealer, for example, is afraid to use printer’s ink they pay particular attention to the subject of furniture. They are searching for the weakest link in the chain of home defenses. Somethin of this is explained by the conditions the writer saw in a

mill town in northern Wisconsin. The local paper carried practically no local advertising when the size of the town was considered, and the stores of the town were but small affairs. In talking to one of the merchants he complained that more than $25,000 was sent from that community to-the Chicago mail-order houses each month. “That is easily twice the amount that is spent In all the stores in this town put together each month,” he explained. “Merchandizing don’t pay in such a place as this.” A few hours later the writer was talking with the publisher of the local paper, and the conversation turned to local advertising, or rather the lack of it. “I was very much tempted to accept a proposition- which I received from one of the Chicago mail-order houses a few days ago,” said the publisher. “I still have the proposition here on my desk. They offer me a cash contract at my regular display rates for 1,500 Inches, tohe used during the year, and In addition to the cash advertising they offer me a small commission on all the new business secured in this county during the life of the contract They say their business in this county durl»g the last 12 months was approximately SB,OOO per month, and I would secure a small percentage on all business done over this amount during the next- 12 months.” - “Have you shown that proposition to the merchants of this .town? 1 ’ I asked. “I have, find it didn’t move them,” he replied. "They simply say it'don’t pay to advertise. I would jump at the offer if it were not for the fact that I cannot bring myself to the point of doing that which I know will help to kill this community." There was an illustration of mailorder methods. The wideawake mailorder man proposed to reap a golden harvest from the flelij the very-much-asleep local merchant would not cultivate.

Does it par to advertise? The more than $200,009,009 that finds Its way to the Chicago mail-order houses each year is garnered by, a campaign of advertising. Yo«v ( Mr. Local Merchant, claim, and rightly, that you can sell the same goods for the same, or less money, than the mail-order houses offer, bat at the same time you complain because the mail-order man gets the business. Why do they get If? Because they advertise. They not only advertise, but they advertise in your field, and they advertise in your field because you do not. They select towns, or special lines where they do not have to meet the competition that is offered by local advertising, and they make advertising pay. We want the people to trade at home; we want them to build up the home community; we want to see the dollars kept in circulation here that one and all of the local people may prosper. We do not want to see the fortunes of the city mail-order man built at the expense of the local community, but we know absolutely the value of publicity, and we know the mail-order houses will capture the dollars If the local merchants will not fight fire with fire; will not show the public what they can buy and at what price. Let us go back to this northern Wisconsin town and see what opportunities the merchants there were sacrificing. It was a mill town, and in no -way an agricultural community. There were not 20 farms within a radius of as many miles. The industry was lumber, and the money to run the mills came from the city. The nearly 1,000 employes were paid in city money, and with a little effort on the part of the merchants in that town this money might have been kept in the town. It might have been made to build a permanent prosperity. But

no, the merchants left a wide field for the mail-order houses which they improved, and the money that might have built a town that would have stood after the lumber interests are gone and the mills are closed has been allowed to return to the city from which it came, and now every lofty pine that falls but drives another nail in the coffin of the town, and all because the merchants did not believe it would pay to advertise. WRIGHT A. PATTERSON.

Intelligent advertising means “s icing the bulldog power and tenacity of the local press on the competition offered the home merchant by the catalogue houses. Intelligent advortising means the employment of mail-order methods in combating the mail-order evil.