CHAPTER XLVI.

BUILDING UP THE FARMER'S TRADE.

Ir will pay you to make a special bid for the farmer's trade. They are good pay, they buy a class of goods that pay you a good profit. They appreciate little gifts, low prices, and respond readily to advertising. They market their products in your town, so they should spend their money there. Of course, in a way they are independent and can buy where they choose, because their little village has but few stores. It is on account of the lack of stores that the mail-order houses go after him. Their catalogue is just as good as a department store in his own village. The writer interviewed many farmers and learned from several that they only came to town "twice a year, in the spring and fall." These are good seasons to advertise to them.

Another thing that pleases farmers is to have ready a big bundle containing an almanac, a calendar, samples of pills and medicines, sample dye cards, veterinary books, picture cards, memorandum books, samples of cough syrups, headache powders, weather charts, envelopes of seeds, etc. These win their good will. Engage the farmer in conversation. He likes to talk of his village, his crops, and his family. Find out his name. He usually tells where he is from. Make his visit pleasant. He will always remember your store. Farmers that come to town often with their products, say once a week or so, are good customers. Buy your eggs, buttermilk, apples, vegetables, poultry from them and in turn they will buy their medicines, extracts, spices, condition powders, and household medicines from you. Oftentimes this farmer does errands for his neighbors who come to town less often. Give him a low rate on witch hazel, saltpetre, fenugrek seed, and articles that he uses frequently. He will have his neighbor's orders filled at your store.

Get interested in his village, ride out there some day, then the next time he comes in tell him how pretty his village is

and that you were out there last week. Perhaps he will tell you to call at his farm the next time you come out and get a glass of the best cider in the village. Get acquainted with your farmer customer, talk to him about his hobbies. You can post yourself by getting your name on the mailing list for the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture in Washington. These bulletins are mostly free and contain articles on all subjects of interest to farmers. You will find many suggestions in them that will be of benefit to your farmer's hobbies, and he will feel pleased at the interest you have taken in him.

As most farmers have telephones, tell him to call you up any night for anything he needs and you will send it out the next morning by the R. F. D. Take a small advertising space in the Grange program, advertise at the Agricultural Fair, the Corn Show, the Vegetable Show. You can easily get the names of the farmers in your locality. Give a farmer a little gift of something useful and he will get you a list of all the farmers in his village..

Farming towns that have railroad connections are good towns to work. The ticket agent will tell you who buys the tickets for your town, get these names, then write letters asking them to call at your store the next time they come to town. In the newspapers you will find the news of the farming towns collected under the names of the different towns. Here you will find the names of farmers' daughters and sons who have been spending a few days with friends or relatives in your town. Try to get the names of people that actually come to your town, then you can get personally acquainted with them. The farmers' trade is the principal trade of the mail-order houses, so it is worth your while to get some of it. The advantage you have of personal acquaintance with the farmer is a strong point in your favor.

COMPETITION OF MAIL-ORDER HOUSES.-Many a pharmacist has been given cause for worry from the loss of several good customers through the severe competition of mail-order houses. He often wonders how they manage to get the business. How

they can influence people to send their money miles away for something they can get right in their own town. A pharmacist cannot stand by and see his customers taken away from him and yet he seems powerless to prevent it. What can he do? How will he stop it? Such questions as these you have probably asked yourself many times. Any kind of competition must be first analyzed to find out its strong and weak points, just as a military commander analyzes his competing forces to learn their strong and weak points in order to form his plan of attack. So you must know where the mail-order houses are strong and where they are weak, in order to properly plan your campaign against them.

Now why does trade leave home? No person is going to put themselves out to write an order for goods they have never seen, and wait a month or so for them, and send the money with the order, unless there is an object for so doing. Some inducement must have been offered. Some strong inducement has been made and by a mail-order house instead of yourself.

The mail-order house's plan is to get all the business possible from each customer. First, they must secure your customer's name. This requires considerable time and expense, especially since they were shut off from their former source of supply, the Rural Free Delivery carriers' lists. They still manage to get the names, however, and are willing to sacrifice big money to get the name of a good live customer. Sometimes they will spend five dollars before a name is secured. The catalogue they send out costs somewhere from $3.00 to $5.00, including the expensive follow-up, so they spend from $8.00 to $10.00 before getting an order from your customer. They keep on pegging specials at him, for less than cost, sometimes, to persuade him to buy. If he simply buys one special on which the mail-order house loses money that customer's name has become an asset, for the fact that he has already bought something shows that he can be influenced by strong advertising backed up by low prices, guaranties, and strong arguments why he should make out a little order for several

things, and for that matter, to buy all his household articles as pictured in the mammoth catalogue, which has been aptly named "The Farmers' Department Store." It has as prominent a place in a farmer's home as the family Bible. All their spare time is devoted to studying its pages.

As many mail-order houses are after the same customer, and as a bargain customer is easily persuaded to flop his patronage from one house to another, the premium scheme is employed. When the customer makes a purchase he is given a premium certificate which has on its face the exact amount of the customer's purchase. When he has accumulated $50 worth of these certificates he turns them in and gets a premium valued at $3.00 or $4.00. So you see the mail-order houses make it an object to deal with them rather than with you.

It won't do for you to sit back and growl at the mail-order houses. They have as much right to be in business as you have, and as the department store has. When you build up your mail-order business you are doing the same thing that they are. You are asking people from other towns to send their money to you rather than spend it with their home merchant.

STRONG POINTS OF MAIL-ORDER HOUSES.-Now the mailorder houses have these advantages over you: 1. They have their catalogues in nearly every farm house. 2. Their customers are saving up their premium certificates to cash them in for premiums. 3. Their buying power is big, as they control factories or own their own and have a substitute for all the well-known salable articles, and can sell at very low prices. 4. They have made good on their goods, so that their customers have become steady buyers and are hard to win over. 5. They have plenty of money and are not afraid to spend it to constantly go after new customers. They will send letter after letter, offer special after special to get a customer to buy at least once. Then their best writers are put onto him until he is finally enrolled as a permanent, steady buyer.

One of these expert letter writers is a friend of the writer. He worked in one of the big Chicago mail-order houses. He

said to the writer: "You ought to see the letters we send out. We dictate them into a phonograph, and we have to get off a great many in a day. We make them as strong as we possibly can, and you ought to see the replies we get. It would do you good to read them. We spend from eighteen to twentyfive cents to get out every letter we send, but they bring the business.'

WEAK POINTS OF MAIL-ORDER HOUSES.-The weak points of the mail-order houses are: 1. They do not know their customers, have never seen them, therefore never come in personal contact with them. 2. They are so far away that it takes a long time to get the goods, and the cost of transportation is expensive. 3. The goods cannot be seen before they are purchased, and the customer is put to the bother of having to write a letter and an order. 4. The customer has to send cash with order, no credit is extended to him. 5. As he is attracted by bargain offers he is hard to hold, for the next one offering a better bargain is apt to get his business.

THE PHARMACIST'S ADVANTAGES.-All these weak points of the mail-order houses constitute the advantage points that the retail pharmacists have over them. It seems as though you ought to be able to compete with them when you are right on the immediate ground. You can personally solicit their trade -you can correspond with them-you can advertise to them -you have a superior location and enjoy a certain prestigeyou can give the best of service-can guarantee the quality of your goods-can give good prices-your own personality and that of your clerks ought to count for something. Surely all these advantages if rightly used ought to influence your customers to spend their money with you. Start right in on an educational campaign. Make them special offers. Get a mail order house catalogue, go over it and you'll find out that you can meet their prices on many articles. You can stand a loss on a few goods to hold your customer.

If he is in good standing, ask him to run a monthly charge account. That is a strong card in your favor. The big department stores in the large cities are constantly sending