Class R^\oo Boo k = GopyiigM? COHRIGHT DEPOSm Getting More Drug Store Business BY FRANK FARRINGTON IL Author of "Making a Drug Store Pay," "Talks by the Old Storekeeper," "Meeting Chain Store Competition," " Meeting Mail Order Compe- tition," "Store Management Complete," " Retail Advertising Complete," etc. SPATULA PUBLISHING COMPANY Boston 14, Mass. Copyright, 1922, By Spatula Publishing Company SEP I i IS22 0CI.A681754 CONTENTS Chapter I PAGES Bringing in New Customers 9-15 Necessity for new customers. New families in town and how to interest them. Increasing acquaintances. Premium plan. Business in new kinds of goods. Chapter II The Neighborhood Drug Store 16-22 Advantages and disadvantages of situation. Price considerations and inducements. Personal letter to customers. Making friends. The personal element. Chapter III Department Store Competition 23-30 Cut prices and exaggerated values. " Challenging " competition. Druggists as experts. Advertising your advantages. Capitalizing your individuality. Chapter IV Some Matters of Management 31-38 Hours of work. Economy. Order and system. Returned goods. Cash selling. Price cutting. Delivery. Having enough change. Generosity. Chapter V Does Early Closing Pay ?..,>.... 39-42 Jealousy between stores. Lines that sell early or late. The evening trade. Early closing and the little fellow, 3 CONTENTS Chapter VI Pages Making Children Like Your Store .... 43-53 Children as customers now and by and by. Taking pains with children. Pleasing parents through their children. Windows to attract children. Children at the fountain. The trade of the school children. Chapter VII Getting the Farmers' Trade 54-64 Farmers like to buy where they know somebody. Going out among farmers to extend acquaintance. Reading farm papers. Government bulletins. Lines farmers buy freely. Mail order competition. Your Mailing List. Veterinary remedies and insecticides. Chapter VIII Preparing for Spring Trade 65-70 Getting ready early for the spring business. Making the store more attractive. Seasonable lines. Chapter IX The Motorists' Business 7*-77 Mailing list of automobile owners. A letter to motorists. Candy and fountain motor trade. Inter- esting tourists with road information. Chapter X Selling Dental Supplies 78-84 What dentists use. Letter to dentists. Getting the dentists' support and commendation for goods. Dentifrices. CONTENTS Chapter XI pages Selling Olive Oil 85-91 Its food value. Widespread sale. Styles of pack- ages. Care of stock. Advertising and window dis- plays suggested. Chapter XII More Hot Water Bottle Sales 92-98 The best selling season. Opening sale and display. A test of strength. Some hot water bottle adver- tisements. Chapter XIII Speeding up Cigar Sales 99-106 The average drug store cigar trade. Care of cigars and cigar case. Porto Rican and other stock. How to please cigar patrons. Some advertisements. Chapter XIV The Candy Case 107-114 Advantages of well selected stock. Display methods. Package or bulk goods ? Candy as a continual seller. Advertising and sampling. Displays. Novelties. School trade. Chapter XV Selling More Soap 11 5-1 19 An experience in buying. Medicated u Specialty" soaps. Introducing the specialty soap idea. Ar- rangement and display. Chapter XVI Who Will Sell the Sundries ? 120-125 Catalogue competition inevitable. How shall you fight it? Your advantage over the mail order house. Specimen of advertisement. Manufacturer's help. s CONTENTS Chapter XVII pages Making Disinfectants Sell 126-134 Disinfectants profitable. The best sellers. Free advertising matter. Featuring the " Prevention " idea. Use of bulletins on prevalent diseases. Phy- sicians' cooperation. When to put on the campaign. Samples of advertising. Chapter XVIII Making the Fountain Successful .... 135-146 Little things that count. How to serve straws. The back bar and mirror. Keeping up the stock. Care of ice cream. Appearance of soda clerks. Music. The school children's trade. Pertinent paragraphs on the business. Chapter XIX Helping the Christmas Sales 147-153 Advertising service. Music in the store. Lighting the store. A comfortable store. The Christmas spirit. Chapter XX Christmas Sales from Regular Stock . . 154-162 Pushing the goods that are not special holiday stock. What these goods are. The goods men buy. Candy and cigar trade. Chapter XXI The Telephone as a Sales Aid .... 163-172 Mechanical telephone service. Rudeness actual or apparent. People we don't patronize by telephone. How not to answer the 'phone. How to please peo- ple over the wire. 6 CONTENTS Chapter XXII Pages Message to the Druggist's Wife .... 173-178 The wife's interest in the business. How she can help make the store more profitable. Woman's judgment good in buying. Reading the drug jour- nals. Cooperation. Chapter XXIII To Have the Best Clerks 179-183 The usual way of getting them. Helping the clerks to make good. Knowing about clerks' family con- nections. Proper equipment for the clerks' use. Chapter XXIV A Chapter for Clerks 184-194 Salesmanship. How to make customers feel friendly. Shaking hands. How to spend time to advantage. Dress. Which goods to push. " I don't know." A Catechism for Druggists 195 " What is a druggist ? " CHAPTER I Bringing in New Customers The druggist who counts his trade safe and sure because a large number of people are steady, de- pendable customers, will be surprised in due time. No matter how many families there are trading at a store regularly, coming there for everything they need in the way of drug store goods, no matter how much they like that store or how willing they are to give it all their patronage, the store cannot sub- sist indefinitely upon their business. Any druggist can discover the necessity for secur- ing new trade, for adding new families to his list, by a very simple process. By making a memoran- dum at the beginning of the year of a hundred good customers, taking them as they run, either by alpha- betical plan or by streets, and then at the end of twelve months going over his list and eliminating those who have dropped out for unavoidable reasons — death, removal, change of store, etc. — a very fair idea may be gained of the length of time that any one line of customers will last. Out of that hundred it will be surprising if less than 15 or 20 per cent, drop out. A loss of ten out of the hundred is probably a very conservative esti- mate in the average town. That means that the business of the store would endure just ten years without the addition of new trade. Of course, there are many things that might occur to reduce the number of customers in a much Getting More Drug Store Business faster ratio, and the store that developed no new trade and secured no transient business, in all prob- ability would not last more than a very few years. This should mean something to every druggist who is looking into the future and hoping for greater things. It should mean that there is a constant need for hustling after the new people who come to town and after the trade that is now going to other stores. Of course, the old customers are important. With- out picking out individual instances it cannot be said that the trade of a new customer is any more im- portant than that of an old one. A customer is a customer. But a rather different line of work is needed to secure new trade from that used for holding the old customers in line. And in order that a business may grow it requires new people to be coming in with their money every day. There is no trade that is any easier to get than that of newcomers in town. It is easy because the newcomer is without fear or prejudice and is ready to trade, or to start trading at least, wherever incli- nation calls, and that is likely to be wherever the first invitation comes from. It is often true, how- ever, that the competitor with the least reputation, the fewest scruples and perhaps the poorest stock has as good a chance of getting it as the oldest and most successful store. This shows that while stock, reputation, ability, caution and precaution all help to hold old custom- 10 Getting More Drug Store Business ers, they have little to do directly with getting new ones from among the newcomers in town. They do help. Everything helps. But the outside appear- ance of the store and the methods used to call the newcomer's attention to the store are what get him in first. In any town of ordinary size the druggist ought to have a method of obtaining and listing the names of the people who are coming into the town to live. This may be best carried out perhaps by studying the local newspapers and making note of the names of families moving in, of workmen, clerks, employees of all sorts, school teachers, of any one who is com- ing to the town to stay for any length of time. Then there should be prepared a stock form of circular or folder attractively made up, calling atten- tion to the advantages of the store and giving its location, together with information as to the lines of goods carried and an offer to deliver at once any- thing needed or to call and get any order the party might wish to give. By keeping these folders ready to mail, it would be but a small task to address them and mail them promptly as new names are added to the list. The new family in town is in a position to appre- ciate any little attention or courtesy that may be shown, and in many instances the little things that a dealer is expected to do and is willing to do for any regular customer, simply as a matter of adver- tising or business, will be accepted as something more if done for a stranger. ii Getting More Drug Store Business The interest thus shown in strangers should be endowed with something more than a mere finan- cial quality. The new family or the new individual may well be given a welcome hand by the druggist as a representative member of a community that is glad to see new people coming in. He should feel a human interest in any stranger just as a matter of humanity, and the fact that it will prove profit- able to his pocketbook ought to make it a pretty easy thing to do. It is not difficult to learn to know the newcomer. If the proprietor cannot get a sight of the head of the new family, let him give the clerks the job of getting to know that person by sight, with instruc- tions to give to any one in the store selling him goods, his name when he comes in, so that he can be called by it and feel that he already has an estab- lished identity. It is a safe bet that when a man goes to a new town to live, if he is called by name in the first drug store he enters, he will do his trading at that store ever after, unless caused to leave by strong and specific reasons. There is something about calling a man by name in a town where he feels lost and alone that gets him right away. If he drops into a drug store and makes a small purchase and before he leaves is addressed by name, he will go out feel- ing two inches taller every time. No customer, whether stranger or friend and acquaintance, should be regarded by the druggist as a mere animated pocket-book. That is not good 12 Getting More Drug Store Business hospitality, and moreover, it is mighty poor business. Of course getting new trade is not all getting the trade of strangers in town. There is the trade the other stores already have and there is the trade that nobody has been getting, trade that can be had by stimulating the demand for such goods as people have been using but little or not at all. All the kinds of advertising that are used to hold the trade already secured have a tendency to help get other trade, but special inducements are usually necessary in order to draw in rauch business from the competing stores. These inducements may take the form of special sales, of premium giving and other schemes. It should be remembered, however, that such schemes must be made to bring in new customers or else they will amount to a simple paying of a premium for business that would have belonged to the store any- way. If any kind of a premium scheme is adopted for use for any length of time, it ought to be well considered in advance and its cost calculated, and the percentage it will add to the cost of doing busi- ness figured very closely. If the scheme will not produce enough new business to enable the drug- gist to pay its cost out of the additional profits and leave a good additional margin, it is a waste of time and money. And it must not only do this this year, but it must continue to do it. It is rarely that a premium or gift scheme is necessary to help hold the old trade, and it is not profitable if its costs has 13 Gettino More Drug Store Business to come out of the profits of the business as it was before the plan was adopted. As long as there is more trade to be had, a pre- mium plan is a good working way of getting it — if it is worked properly. One great trouble with pre- mium plans, though, is that after being put in oper- ation they are simply allowed to run themselves. No effort is made to bring them to the attention of new people, and they soon simmer down to a point where they are used only by the steady cus- tomers of the store, and here it distinctly does not pay. A premium plan needs plenty of advertising, continuous advertising, just as much as if it were a business of itself. One of the cleanest ways of increasing a business is that of developing wholly new trade. There are all the while coming on the market new goods or improved goods which take the place of some estab- lished article or which cater to a brand new taste. The bicycle is an instance of this. The automo- bile is another. The safety razor is still another. These articles have developed into big businesses without a corresponding loss by any other business. They have made places for themselves and created a new demand. Along with these have also been created demands for supplies to go with them. These remarkable successful instances point out an idea. It has been said that there is nothing new under the sun, but this does not apply to our case, for there is scarcely a month that something new may 14 Getting More Drug Store Business not be found in the advertising pages of the maga- zines and trade papers, too, which should prove a good business getter in the pharmacy, and which will not have to displace anything else in order to create a demand for itself. These new things may easily be discovered by the live, wide awake druggist, and while he perhaps may not care to invest much money in such things, he can still afford to take a chance and stock them a little and push them a good deal. The vacuum bottle was just such an item, and the dealer who first stocked these novelties and pushed them in most towns succeeded in getting the cream of the trade on them, and in many instances was able in this way to get into his store people who had never been there before, but who came to see or to buy some- thing they could not get elsewhere. It is a big start on getting the trade of a new customer if that customer can be lured into the store once. It requires ingenious advertising and clever planning to get people in who are not regular patrons, but when they are once in it is easy to treat them well and to make them want to come again. It is easy, but it is not done by every drug- gist. As a rule, the things that are easy to do are the things that we do not do. If we are assigned a difficult method of producing a certain result we are more likely to go ahead with it than if we are shown a way so easy that it does not seem worth trying. 15 CHAPTER II The Neighborhood Drug Store One thing the drug store in the business section of the town does not have to worry about. It does not have to find ways to get people to come to that vicinity to buy, because that is where the most of the people do a considerable portion of their shop- ping. The neighborhood drug store is up against a dif- ferent proposition. No great number of people pass its doors in the natural course of their daily travels. There is perhaps no other store near by to help draw people that way. The druggist so situated has to play pretty nearly a lone hand. And yet a good many young druggists just starting in business cannot afford to rent stores in the busiest part of the town because rents are high there and the stores are in a more expensive class. Many young men must be satisfied with a neighborhood drug store or none. The side street situation offers a fairly good sized store, usually with a nice enough front, at a rent that is within the means of the man with little means. The trade is distributed through the day evenly, without rush hours, thus enabling the han- dling of it with a minimum of help. When the druggist opens his neighborhood store, however, he is at once confronted with the problem of how to get people to come there. Not enough perhaps pass by the store to make a profitable busi- 16 Getting More Drug Store Business ness if he secured their trade altogether. He must bring people his way from all parts of the adjacent neighborhood. It is easy enough to say that the neighborhood druggist may offer price inducements to get the trade, but that is not the answer. Mere price cutting is never the road to a business success, and anyway, there are stores enough in town already where prices are cut to the bone, and the neighborhood druggist needs a profit on his goods, perhaps more profit than the downtown store instead of less, because he has a small turnover. Still, by reducing the variety of stock, as may be done in the store located where the demands are less diverse, and by buying with care to keep the stock as low as it can be kept and yet supply the trade, expenses can be kept down to where the neighbor- hood store will be able to sell cheaply, and pernaps can handle some side lines at prices lower ^han competitors. At all events, if the neighborhood druggist is to undersell or try to undersell other stores, he should make his price just enough lower to effect a saving of a cent or two, and avoid cutting enough to attract attention. The bigger downtown stores will not pay any attention to one neighborhood druggist cutting a cent or two off from the price of a dollar article, but that cent lower figure may be capitalized just as well with the neighborhood trade as a ten cent saving could be. Every little saving that is effected should be 17 Getting More Drug Store Business brought to the attention of the customers by telling them personally when they make the purchase or by putting a little slip of white paper in the parcel, writing on it with a blue pencil, " You are buying this two cents cheaper than the downtown price/ ' A constant reiteration of little price savings will inevitably have its effect in impressing the neigh- borhood people with the fact that they can buy as well near home as they can downtown. The neighborhood druggist always has the oppor- tunity of writing letters to his possible customers. To this end he ought to accumulate a list of the families around him, including all possible customers. This list ought to be classified as to mothers, school children, society folks, motor owners, smokers, young men, young ladies, etc. It ought to reach out to all people who live near the store and to all who do and might go and come by that street. Time may be taken to write a few letters every day, writing them in long hand if no typewriter is available, and making them actual personal business letters. Suppose the druggist writes a letter, some- thing like the one below, to as many people each day as he has time. In a year he would reach hun- dreds of possible customers. Dear Madam : — You no doubt realize that there is money to be saved on household expenses by buying carefully. That means that if you will take pains to find out where you can buy to the best advantage you can make your money go farther and get more with it. It costs us less to run our store than it would if we had a 18 Getting More Drug Store Business big place down on Broadway. Of course, we can sell a little cheaper on that account. You have been paying ..c for white castile soap if you have bought it downtown lately. We are able to sell you the same good white castile for . .c. How about moth preventives for keeping the woolens and furs not in use ? The best thing we know of for that purpose is and we price this at . . c, which saves you a little money over any reliable article of a similar sort sold downtown. It is not our practice to make leaders of a few well known articles and make up the difference on others. We know what it costs us to do business and we base our charges on that cost. We are not running a freak or a cut rate store, but we are here to give you the kind of goods you want and sell them as cheaply as we can afford to do. Isn't it a convenience to have a good drug store right in the neighborhood ? We are here to serve you in any way we can and to save you money and time and carfare. Come by our store when you can conveniently do so and you will nearly always see in our windows some money saving suggestion. Yours very truly, People will come out of their way to trade with the druggist who makes it an object for them to do so. It is not necessary that it always be a financial object. You who run the neighborhood drug store do much of the selling yourself. You have not reached the stage where you sit back in an office chair behind a wire fence and leave it to others to meet your customers. With you a customer is a personal 19 Getting More Drug Store Business visitor whom you meet at the door when you can and with whom you part at the door. Did you ever stop to think that that is just what most buyers like ? When you go into a store to purchase, don't you like best to do business with one of the firm instead of with a clerk. Well, there probably isn't a house- wife in your neighborhood who wouldn't be willing to take a few extra steps to buy in a drug store where she would always do business with the pro- prietor. She knows he will take a greater personal interest in her purchases, and she will buy of him in preference to patronizing a big downtown store, where she is unknown to the clerks. The personal element is today getting and holding trade in thousands of neighborhood stores and sub- urban shops, while the big stores are trying to fight this condition with more elaborate displays, more expensive delivery systems and deeper price slashing. If you make a personal friend of the customer, that customer will come out of the way several blocks to buy from you, and she will tell her friends about your store, and bring them with her when she comes. The personal element is the best busi- ness getting proposition the small store can develop. If you are a crabbed, uncongenial cuss, a poor mixer and a business-is-business chap with no real interest in your fellow human beings, you have not in you the making of a success in a store around the corner, or in a small store anywhere. The only place for you is in some business where you do not come 20 Getting More Drug Store Business into contact with folks at all, but do your work with machines. I said it is not always the financial side of the matter that brings people out of their way to pat- ronize a store. Service is the big word nowadays in merchandising, and service is something you can give. You can give the customer the personal attention she wants. You can see that the clerk gives each individual that attention too, because the clerk is working right under your nose. You can see that every parcel that goes out is properly wrapped and tied. You can see that goods that are not exactly in perfect condition are sold for just what they are. You can meet the automobile customer at the curb, and you can carry her parcels out for her. You can provide a chair for the tired woman, and you can pass out a cigar to the man you want to favor. You can make yourself to a degree a professional adviser of the families who patronize you. You can put yourself in a position not very far removed from that of family physician if you like. You can make people see that conferring with you about their drug store purchases means to save money on them in one way or another. If you think you can start in a neighborhood store and develop a business on the waiting basis, you are doomed to disappointment. The old saying that " Everything comes to him who waits/' does not apply to building up a business in a neighbor- hood drug store. You will have to go after the 21 Getting More Drug Store Business trade, and since you cannot afford to go after it with costly advertising, since the newspapers are not available for a neighborhood store, you will have to use other means. Use your personality, your windows, your ability to write letters, and add to those all the helps the makers of well-known goods will give you — because you will have to have such goods if you are going to get or hold the trade of people intelligent enough to know its standard. 22 CHAPTER III Department Store Competition The competition of the department store affords one of the most perplexing problems with which the druggist in many places has to contend. Many department stores carry large stocks of a great variety of the lines stocked also by the drug- gists. They specialize in perfumes and toilet goods, rubber goods, stationery, all sorts of druggists' sundries. These lines they advertise in such a way as to convey the impression that they can undersell the druggist, and they even go so far at times as to intimate that the druggist asks exorbitant profits. This is scarcely fair and square competition, but we cannot ignore a competitor merely because he does not play fair. He may seriously undermine public confidence in our business if we let him go his way undefied. The druggist finds the department store offering two kinds of competition, both based on price. The first is the cut price on the standard advertised arti- cle, which everybody recognizes and knows is a bargain. The second is the price on the article of unknown quality, so described to make it appear to be the same quality for which the druggist asks a higher price. The effect of such advertising of cut prices in dis- crediting the druggist with his patrons has to be considered. The situation cannot be dismissed with a simple condemnation of the department store man 23 Getting More Drug Store Business as a fraud. If the Big Store is doing its best to make the druggist appear a robber when it comes to prices on lines carried by both, something must be done to offset that sort of work. They say paper will lie still while you print any- thing on it. It is an easy matter for a department store to advertise hot-water bottles, as specially priced at 98 cents, value $1.75, and, as far as the public is concerned, they may get away with the exaggerated value. A conscienceless department store, and let us be thankful these are becoming less frequent, can give any kind of values it likes in the druggists' sundries line without fear of the people in general knowing much about the truthfulness of the proposition. The public cannot tell the difference in hot-water bottles, tooth brushes, hair and nail brushes, fountain syringes, and countless other things, until it is probably too late to complain. A druggist who was troubled with a particularly virulent kind of department-store competition, which was constantly trying to make it appear that the druggist was a robber, came right out into the open with a little plan of his own which had a tendency to draw the claws of this competitor. He devoted one large show case to meeting this competition. He put a sign above it, " Competition Department." Throughout the case he used little cards reading, "We Challenge Competition/ ' "We Undersell Department Stores/' " Our Prices as Low as Anybody's," etc. In this show case was carried a constantly chang- 24 Getting More Drug Store Business ing stock of such goods as the department store was advertising, priced at their prices or lower. These were goods of the department-store class, bought cheap to enable the druggist to compete with that form of competition on an even basis. Whenever the department store advertised a special value, the druggist was right there with what he showed to be a better value, a similar article at an even lower price. He went the department store one better on price on all the cheap-quality goods. He met them on standard goods. He advertised that the goods in that case were sold on the depart- ment-store plan — anything to make the price look cheap. This kind of work had a strong tendency to discredit the department-store methods, and even to give the department-store a black eye. His news- paper advertisements saying that he had a " depart- ment where goods were sold on the department-store plan " began to get under the belt of the department- store people, though there was no chance to com- plain publicly of the method of getting even with them. The result was a gradual discontinuance of the objectionable competition. Of course, the big store tried to head off that kind of advertising, and one local newspaper was influenced to refuse to allow the druggist to run such advertisements as ha was using, but this only made matters worse for the department-store, because the druggist gave full publicity to the complaint, and the department store was blamed for trying to "muzzle the press. " The druggist who finds the department-stores 25 Getting More Drug Store Business getting his business, needs, first of all, to set about developing on the part of the public a confidence in his store that cannot be felt in the drug-store depart- ment of the big store. The druggist is a professional man, and as such is a reliable individual whose statements about his goods bear the stamp of knowl- edge and reliability. The druggist is an expert in his line of goods, and he is qualified to tell his customers more about them than any department-store salesperson can tell. We all know how much the average, or the above-the- average salesperson in the department store knows about the quality of bristle goods and rubber goods. In the department store little or no attention is paid to the technical side of the goods — everything is commercial. If a customer wants to know why English brushes are the best, why the best bristles come from Russia, why Japanese brushes are cheap in quality, why a red hot-water bottle may be or may not be better than a black one, can that cus- tomer find out in the department store ? Verily not. (Unfortunately, there are many drug stores where he cannot find out, either.) The department-store salesperson cannot tell much about the goods, except the price and such other facts as are obvious upon the surface. There is really very little inducement save the price for buy- ing such goods in a department store. The odds are all in favor of your store when it comes to the better class of trade. The department- store druggists' sundries department gets trade in 26 Getting More Drug Store Business two instances. It gets some trade from people who happen to be passing through the department and buy because they see something they want. It gets some more trade from people who think they can buy the same goods there more cheaply than else- where. The former class of trade will naturally come to you except when occasional purchases are made simply from being where the goods are seen. The latter class you must get by showing them through your advertising and displays that you can sell as cheaply as anyone, quality for quality. Of course, when you get the customer into your store, you are in a position to give a service that they can- not get in the department stores. You ought to be able to hold the trade, once it comes your way. In addition to advertising your goods, advertise that which no department store can advertise, because it does not possess it — the qualifications for giving the public the services of graduate phar- macists in all that they buy in the pharmacy. The average drug-store customer knows little or nothing about the goods he is buying except what he is told. He possesses himself no technical knowledge. He buys on the say-so of the seller. Can't you make it plain to the people that it is worth while for them to seek the store where they can find out anything they want to know about what they are buying, where they can be certain that the goods are guar- anteed on a basis of understanding, and that all adjustments will be made with intelligence? When people buy drug-store goods, they want to 27 Getting More Drug Store Business know that they get just they think they are getting. They do not know, they have no way of discovering, what the actual quality of the goods may be until they determine by wear or use. If you are an honest druggist, they will feel that they can depend upon what they buy because of your professional information. Don't leave it for them to find out such things for themselves. Advertise your advan- tages as an experienced dealer in certain lines rather than as a mere middleman. There is, of course, redress when a department- store purchase goes wrong, but it is not the same as the adjustment by a specialist who is himself the final judge in the matter, the reputation of whose store depends on how he handles adjustments. One hold the druggist can get on his customers that the department store can scarcely secure is that of personal popularity. The personal element counts for a great deal in securing and holding trade, and it can be made to pull strongly in the case of the small store when it does not exist at all in the department-store. The drug store is representative of the individu- ality of the man behind it. It typifies his business attributes, his own policies and his methods with his customers. People will warm up to an individual as they will not to an institution. You, the drug- gist on the corner of Main and Second streets, can be a distinct personality in the eyes of the public around you, not only of your personal acquaintances, but of the whole public. 28 Getting More Drug Store Business You may become known as a liberal druggist, as a good man to do business with, as a druggist who will make right anything that is not all right, as a druggist who knows his stock and who knows all about the goods he sells. A salesperson behind the sundries counter in the department-store might be as well informed as you about the business. That person might even become known to certain customers as an expert in the line. But all that is unlikely to be the case, and even so, that salesperson can never develop any such general reputation as you can develop. It is not enough to possess all the desirable quali- ties that a successful druggist should possess. It is not enough that your store possess all the desira- ble attributes of a successful drug store. These things are essential to success, but the success will not come in proportion as you and your store possess them, but rather in proportion as you advertise the possession of them. It is the publicity you give such qualities that counts. Advertise your knowledge of drug-store goods. Advertise your personal attention to the stock and to the trade. Advertise the advantages of buying at a store personally conducted by an experienced druggist, where the buying is done by a man who knows all the ins and outs of the lines rather than by a general buyer who is merely looking for some- thing that can be made to sell by attaching a high value and a low price. Advertising is what gets the business, and no 29 Getting More Drug Store Business matter how well your store is run, no matter how good service you give or how great values you offer, unless you use advertising to get all this before the public, it counts for little. The department-store naturally uses much larger advertising space than you use, but you can proba- bly afford to use as much space as that store aver, ages for its drug-store lines. Probably you can afford to use more space than that. Your windows can be devoted to drug-store goods all the time, while the department-store windows only occasionally are used for that kind of stock. You have many advantages, and you ought to be able to keep away from the department stores all the trade except part of the two classes I mentioned. Nothing can be done to department-store com- petition, or to any other competition, if you are afraid of it. You will make absolutely no headway by sitting down and complaining about it. Keep think- ing what you can do, devising little plans you can carry out, little schemes you can operate. Keep working to interest people personally in you and in your store. See that your employees all take the same personal interest. Let no day go by that you do not get in a whack at the department store in some way. I do not mean a knock, but a stroke of work in the form of advertising or display or per- sonal effort that will count in your favor as against this kind of competition. Keep the thing on your mind and keep working at it. 30 CHAPTER IV Some Matters of Management The nature of the hours of work for the employee of the store and the hours at which the store should be opened or closed is a very important one. In some places the clerk's hours are regulated by legis- lation or by organization of clerks, but in most in- stances the matter is left to the disposition of the employer himself. He is the sole arbiter of the question. Every clerk should have proper hours off for rest and recreation. This is not alone for his good. It is for the good of the store as well. No over- worked and overtired employee can give good serv- ice, and a mistake made by a tired drug clerk is liable to be vastly more expensive than one made by a weary 5 and 10 cent store girl. There is enough time in almost every store when business is practically at a standstill, so that clerks can have time enough out to keep fresh and hours enough for recreation. Economy. Many of us have had that word drilled into us until we hate the sight and sound of it. In private life it may not be a pleasant word to con- template, but in business life it should not be unpleasant, and it should be a part of the daily vocabulary of the store. Without economy in the store there will have to be plenty of it in the home. The omission of economy in one place must be made up by supplying it in some other 3i Getting More Drug Store Business Economy in the big expenses is commonly con- ceded to be necessary and no one scouts it, but economy in the little things, petty economy, is harder to establish. Unthinking clerks sometimes brand their employer as stingy when he is merely wisely economical. Odd pieces of twine and heavy wrapping paper saved ; empty boxes and barrels sold instead of being given away ; second-hand bot- tles washed up and used for suitable purposes — all these and many other things cause the clerk trouble, and if he is not the right sort he is likely to form a wrong idea of the "old man" from them. The wise druggist will explain to his help the neces- sity for these economies and seek to secure their co-operation in the economies. Order and system are among the prime requisites for drug store success. Without order there will constantly be duplication of orders with resulting overstock. No big business pretends to order its affairs in any but a systematic form. There must be system in every department. System in the buying, selling, manufacturing, storing, advertising ; in all parts of the store work. Just in the simple matter of storing surplus stock, if there is not a proper system part of that stock will be shoved out ot sight while more of the same is ordered, and the surplus does not come to light till inventory rolls around — and in some stores that is a long time. Order is Heaven's first law, it has been said, and it might equally well be said that it should be fhe 32 Getting More Drug Store Business drug store's first law. When nobody knows where an article is or whether there is any at all, lack of order is at fault and will produce a loss. Cleanliness is a part of orderliness and one of the surest and steadiest losses in a store is that caused every year by dirt. The loss may be small in most pharmacies, but it is there and figures in the year's statement. Loafers sometimes tax the ingenuity of the store manager, especially in the rural districts. True enough, the drug store loafers are apt to be more or less genteel, but they are loafers none the less, and no woman cares to enter a drug store to buy where a group of young fellows crowd around the cigar case or hang over a counter in idle gossip. It should be made plain to the more or less inti- mate friends of the proprietor and his clerks that loafing, even of the most gentlemanly (?) sort, is an expense to the store that exceeds the receipts that come from the purchases of the loafers themselves. Taking back goods is rather different in a drug store from what it is in some other stores. There are plenty of drug store goods that cannot be put back in stock if they are taken back. But there is no trouble in a druggist living up to the " money back if you want it " motto. Such goods as cannot be sold on that basis should be sold with the under- standing plainly expressed to the customer that they cannot be returned unless imperfect. Such proprietary preparations, too, as the manufacturer does not guarantee to give satisfaction should not 33 Getting More Drug Store Business be allowed to go out with the customer thinking them accompanied by any guarantee. An important part of the managing of the drug store is the reading of the drug trade journal. Such journals are filled with ideas and suggestions that are of a great deal of value. In their pages are found methods for securing more trade ; for mak- ing more money on the trade in hand ; for doing business more easily, etc. In their advertising pages are found announcements of new goods and new advertising helps. The manager who lets his trade papers go unread does not know what a mis- take he makes. The question of whether to sell goods only for cash or to allow extended credit is one that is ever before the retail dealer of all sorts. The druggist has a better chance to sell for cash than most mer- chants. His sales average smaller amounts than many stores and there is less inclination to run an account at the drug store. We believe that a limited credit plan is the best, extending credit for thirty days to responsible parties and collecting promptly so as to discourage the running of big bills, and refusing credit altogether to people who are not known or who have shown themselves to be poor pay. A dollar's worth of goods on the shelf may not be money, but neither is a dollar on the book money, and sometimes it never becomes money. Price cutting and meeting competition demand the attention of the store manager constantly. There 34 Getting More Drug Store Business are always frequent complaints that So and So is selling this or that or something else for less money. Many of these complaints are founded upon hearsay and have no basis in fact. A few are truth. The store that would succeed is almost compelled to meet prices of competitors in its own neighborhood, stores that are really competing for the same trade, But we do not advise indiscriminate price slashing, nor do we believe in the policy of trying to force a cutter out of business by cutting below him. To cut below is to invite him to cut further. To meet him will hold the trade just as well. There should be no delay or hesitation in meeting a new cut any- where unless it is not to be met at all. Let it be met right at the outset and the fact made pub- lic. Even advertise the cut rate, and if possible get credit with the public or some of it for having ori- ginated it. In the matter of delivery, if any delivering is to be done, it will pay to do all of it that there is a chance for. The druggist should either deliver, and do it well and promptly, or else refuse altogether. It is profitable usually to make a specialty of deliver- ing and make such quick deliveries that many an order will come to the drug store that would other- wise go to the grocery store. This prompt deliv- ery idea is one of the best ways of combating the grocery tendency to edge into the drug store lines. Delivering only such goods as the customer par- ticularly insists shall be sent up has no merit. It may keep the customer from doing her trading else- 35 Getting More Drug Store Business where, but it will not have the merit of attracting any one's business. It is far better in this case to make a virtue of a necessity than merely to acknowl- edge the necessity. Doing just what is absolutely necessary to accommodate the public will never give them a warm spot in their hearts for any store. People like to be accommodated as if it were a pleasure to do it. Anyone who ever went into a store to make a twenty-five cent purchase with only a five dollar bill in hand realizes the unpleasantness of having to wait while the clerk looks for change among the neighboring stores. It seems a little thing for a store to keep enough change in the money drawer to take care of any ordinary bill that may come along. It is a little thing and not a difficult one, but how many smaller drug stores do it? It gives a store a good name to have people find out that they can always get a bill changed there cheerfully, and it brings in many a customer who would other- wise go elsewhere. Of course it is sometimes a nuisance to change bills for people who never buy anything, but anyone who is accommodated con- tinually is sure to reciprocate in some way some time, even though the druggist himself does not know of it. The people we accommodate often do us a good deal of good outside by things they say that never reach our ears. And the contrary is also true. The people we refuse to accommodate injure us by their outside talk. Promptness is a cardinal virtue in a drug store. 36 Getting More Drug Store Business It should be conspicuous all through the store's work in buying and selling and in everything else. The workers should be on hand promptly when they are scheduled. They should be prompt in attending to customers and in doing the store work. Procrastination is more than the thief of time ; it is the thief of dollars and many of them. Bills should be paid as well as collected promptly. Prescriptions should be ready when promised. Special orders should be sent without delay, even telegraphed if necessary, in order to have the goods at the time desired. The man who cannot be prompt cannot run a drug store right. Every bill that carries a discount should be dis- counted even if it is necessary to borrow the money to do it. Discounting bill helps the dealer's repu- tation with his wholesaler, to say nothing of its helping his bank account. Though the store is not a department store, if it is large enough for different lines of goods to be kept in different places, it is large enough so that the separate departments ought to be indicated by plain signs hung up over the counters. These serve the purpose of showing people where they can find the goods they are after without the necessity of asking questions unnecessarily and sometimes in embarassment, and also they serve to remind people of lines they may need and might have forgotten, or to show them that the store carries the goods — a fact which the customer may not have known. The use of show cards and signs inside is of value 37 Getting More Drug Store Business in direct proportion to the quality and plainness of the signs. Signs are clerks that draw no salaries, but make sales just the same. The well managed store should seek to gain a reputation for generosity. Nobody likes to trade in a stingy store, and stores get that reputation or the reverse, just as individuals do, and such a reputation sticks and does harm or good for a long time. A reputation for stinginess may be acquired merely by carelessness in adjusting a claim or two with talkative customers who take pains to spread their opinions broadcast. Generosity in store management, like the same quality anywhere, costs something, but it is worth something. It gets the store liked and makes people willing to trade there. In the matter of vacation allowances to its help the store can well afford to be generous too. Every man in the store needs an annual vacation, with complete freedom from store surroundings. The proprietor needs it most of all. The man comes back ready to do better work and ready to take up the business of the store with some real interest. Any store worker deprived of a vacation will cost the store the price of his vacation easily enough in the course of the year. 38 CHAPTER V Does Early Closing Pay? Drug stores keep open longer hours than other stores. They are expected to do so. In the cities there is no thought of their reducing the open hours to any great extent. Perhaps the public would object if they did. But in the average town and in the smaller vil- lages there is a more or less constant agitation in favor of the earlier closing of all stores, including the drug stores. The commercial club or the cham- ber of commerce may have taken up the matter and petitions are sometimes circulated. There is more jealousy among the various stores in the smaller town, and the grocer who has some cigar trade hates to close up evenings and leave the drug store open and likely to get some of his cigar customers away from him. The jeweler sees fountain-pen trade that he wants, going to the druggist if the latter keeps open eve- nings and he does not. The cigar store will not close up and leave the drug store open. The result of all this is that the business men in all lines may bring pressure to bear upon the druggist, claiming that he is the obstacle standing in the way of early closing all along the line. The druggist's clerks think they are having it a good deal harder than clerks in adjoining stores because they have to work longer hours. The poor druggist gets it from all sides. 39 Getting More Drug Store Business Two things the druggist must do in connection with the early closing agitation. He must find out whether it pays him to keep open, and he must jus- tify himself before the public for doing so if there is a general idea that he is blocking the wheels of progress by refusing to close early. One thing the druggist must take into considera- tion : he can be sure of losing some business. For example, his window displays may create sales on candy or cigars or magazines for use that evening, and if the sale is not made then the need has passed the next day. The evening has taken care of itself without those aids. Or, again, the man who has a little headache in the evening may drop in and get something for it if the store is open, whereas if it is closed he may get over it without medicine. We all make many purchases because of the opportunity and because display causes us to step in and buy. The things we put off buying till tomorrow we often fail to buy. In many drug stores the peak of the day's business is in the evening. A druggist told me the other day of an evening when all the stores in town had agreed to close up for some special event. He tried to close at 7 o'clock as he had agreed, but the store was full of customers and it was 8 o'clock before he had a chance to lock the door. To satisfy his curiosity he made some figures and found that he had taken in during that hour as much as he had taken in all the rest of the day. For a time I watched in my own store the trend 40 Getting More Drug Store Business of trade and found that throughout a considerable part of the year the evening sales were at least a third of the total sales for the day. I think it can easily be proved that it pays almost any druggist to keep open evenings on the basis of the business he would otherwise lose. In some communities there is a rule for closing early three nights in the week. When this plan is followed it is usually found that it kills the other nights, except perhaps Saturday night. People cannot remember which are the closed and which the open nights, and they cease buying evenings. They get along without. Obviously it is better business for the druggist to keep open evenings as late as he finds business comes in in profitable quantity, considered on the average. But it is equally obvious that there should be an effort made to lessen the working hours of the force when they are long and wearying. A little adjustment of the schedule so that no more help will be retained at night than is necessary will help matters. There can be alternation of the evening and of the earlier morning work so that the net result will be less time on duty for all, though accompanied by longer hours of open store. When an effort is being made to arrange an early closing schedule and there is a tendency to blame the druggist for blocking it, the druggist may advantageously take some advertising space to pre- sent his side of the matter. The public likes to have drug stores open as a measure of safety and 41 Getting More Drug Store Business convenience. They will even look upon the drug- gist as public spirited because he declines to close up. Early closing by any line of stores plays into the hands of the little fellows who refuse to close and who are not regarded as being of enough importance to be considered seriously. Many a young man starting in business with a small store and little money has gradually built up a trade by accommo- dating people when his bigger competitors were closed up tight. Keeping open as long as there is a profitable trade coming in means more net return, because it means no more overhead expense. You can't take in any money with the door locked. Arrange your plans so that you and the force will work less hours, but do it by dividing the responsibility and shifting the hours of work, rather than by locking the door. 42 CHAPTER VI Making Children Like Your Store The old saying is that " As the twig is bent, so the tree inclines/ ' and it is sound logic. The way a child is bent, mentally, morally or physically, that way the child is going to go. And the way a child starts in the matter of shopping, that way that child is pretty likely to continue. So, if you are going to remain in the drug busi- ness in your present location or near it for any great length of time, see that you get the children inclined your way. Unless you get them to like you while they are young, you will not easily get their business when they become real customers. A fly-by-night dealer may get on without cultivat- ing the children's friendship, but we are not inter- ested in that kind of business men, and anyway there are not many of them in the drug trade. It is not all of the value of getting the children on your side that they may be your customers when they grow up. Children are often actual customers of the store while they are still children, and they always exert a real influence over their parents, bringing them to you if the store is a good children's store. Children are mighty observant. They notice how their parents are treated and they notice how they themselves are treated. If you treat a little girl's mother politely and wrap up her parcel and hand it to her and bid her good afternoon, and then when 43 Getting More Drug Store Business the little girl is sent by herself and gets the carton of something or other handed to her without a wrapper, or more likely thrown down on the counter, while the money is picked up and you look idly out of the window and let the youngster go away without a word of thanks or a " come again/* don't think the child will not notice the difference. Children's eyes are wide open all the while they are in your store. A child may realize that because she is a child, she does not receive a grown-up's treatment and that is where you have a chance to get in right with her. You can treat her more like a grown-up and instead of merely not getting any negative effect, you can get positive effect. You can make the child customer feel friendly instead of merely avoiding offending her. Don't ignore the child coming in with a parent. To be polite to that child, pleases the child and that pays, even if the child is fresh and obstreperous. And when you are polite to the child, when you give it notice, you please the parent — and that pays too. I don't care who the parent is, it is not in human nature to fail to feel pleased with attention to one's children in a store — or out of it. We laugh a good deal at the old-fashioned methods, as we are pleased to term them, of the druggists and others in business twenty years ago or more, but there was an attention to details in that day that is neglected now. In those days a druggist had time to look at a child. He had time 44 Getting More Drug Store Business to take a personal attitude with every youngster who came in. And he was not afraid to hand out a stick of candy for fear of violating the Interstate Com- merce Act by making free goods an act of unfair competition. Our fathers and our grandfathers gave more of the personal touch to their relations with customers. Perhaps they had more time and made larger profits and competition was less keen. Perhaps they were less efficient and made money by it, or in spite of it. Anyway, druggists used to give the children better individual attention and did more to establish a per- sonal relationship with them. But you can do more of this right now and you can see that your clerks do it. It may lose you a little immediate business, but it will build up a future trade that no one can get away from you. You may, by talking longer with a child, be deprived of enough time to sell an adult some extras, but if you will get your store the reputation of being friendly to children and patient with them, as if you really liked them, you will occupy a unique and well-fortified position in the hearts and minds of both children and parents . Your store will profit by the work you do along that line. You sell some lines of goods that are bought by children, that are favored by them. About these, the children are just as adults are about the things they buy. They are influenced by advertising and display. When you get up a window display of any- thing adapted to children, give it a touch that will interest the children. 45 Getting More Drug Store Business Take tooth brushes, for example. You know that almost every parent in town will thank you if you help interest the children in brushing their teeth. Why not do it and get them lined up on your side ? Take some crepe paper decorated with a design adapted to interesting the boys and girls, a Mother Goose pattern or something else suitable. Using this, make a proper setting for your display. Then arrange children's tooth brushes and dentifrices so they will interest children. Make one of those big tooth brushes that you have seen made with a long, properly-shaped board made into the handle and the children's brushes stuck in as " bristles." This in itself will be the kind of a freak thing that children will stop to look at. Then build out of the tooth-paste cartons some kind of a cardboard house. You might make a recognizable reproduction of the school house. Use cards to indicate the flavors of the tooth pastes. "Tastes like wintergreen" may describe one kind, and that will mean something to the youngster who spells it out, when "Antiseptic, non-irritant " would not mean a thing. The point of contact is going to be along the line of the child's likes rather than its actual needs. Then announce that you are going to give a kite to every child of eight to twelve years of age who buys a brush and dentifrice and comes back in a month and brings a card signed and stating that the brush has been used every day for the month. Give out the cards with the brushes. Put some of the 46 Getting More Dgug Store Business cards in the window along with the kites and the dentifrice, etc., and a big card explaining the plan. You will find that many of the parents will fall in heartily with your scheme and as a matter of fact, you will be the means of starting many youngsters along the right road to oral hygiene, though they wouldn't recognize it by that name. Then take the matter of candy for children. Pick out a special package suited to the use of the young- sters and make a big display of it inside the store with a card on it : u Fine, Pure Candy for Children," and with another card appealing to the children more directly : " Not to be opened till you get home — The Kind Children like." This is an appeal to the interest of the kiddies with a proviso that will suit the parents who are willing enough to buy proper candy but don't want a child tagging along, getting all stuck up with it. So when you sell that candy with the understanding that it is not to be opened until taken home, you play into parents' hands. Then the soda fountain has its appeal to the children and you want the business they can bring to you. You should have small tables and seats, or one at least, that will fit the children, or at least a few chairs that are high enough so the children will be able to eat or drink through a straw from the top of the table without having to take the glass in their laps. How would you enjoy drinking soda from a glass you had to set on something so high that you could not get your head high enough to put your mouth over the end of the straw ? Of course you 47 Getting More Drug Store Business would take the glass in your hands, and then of course you would spill some of the contents. Get the table low enough or the chair high enough. It doesn't matter how you do it, but make it at least as easy for the child as for the adult to drink with- out making a muss. And the kind of ice cream spoons you use are not always adapted to being eaten with as a child eats except with unusual chances of spilling. Have some regular teaspoons that a child knows how to use, short handled and larger than these long handled freaks made for tall soda glasses and experienced feeders, not for beginners. When you make ice cream and soda eating and drinking easy for the children, you increase their enjoyment and make them want to come again, and you make their parents more willing to bring them or to send them. That is going to count a good deal for the benefit of your store. Another phase of the children's trade that is quite important, especially in the drug store, is the busi- ness you do with them when they are sent by older people for various purchases. At such times you have a chance to treat young- sters in such a way that they will be pleased and like the store, and you may be sure they will go home and tell their parents how they were treated. In many instances they will be actually asked what the druggist said and did. In every case where they do not get the right kind of treatment, they are going to tell about it. 48 Getting More Drug Store Business If you build up for your store a reputation for treating children well when they come alone, they will be sent to you oftener. Why not advertise the fact that you give children by themselves special attention, that anyone may send the children to you on errands with the full assurance that they will receive perfectly fair treatment and no advantage of the fact that they are inexperienced. Then treat them so well that they will want to come shopping at your store by themselves. Many a time a family gets along without something that would be useful in an emergency because they do not think they can send the child after it. Urge people to send boys and girls with written orders, and then take all possible pains in filling out those orders just as the sender wanted them. Treating the children right, you see, is of great importance and it has its reward both now and in the future. Make your store the one store in your town or in your neighborhood where the children are treated right and you will be able to increase your trade just by that means. The school trade, the business of the pupils of the various schools within trading radius of a drug store, is well worth getting. Most druggists, espe- cially in small towns, carry a line of school stationery. Neighborhood druggists in the large cities also find it a profitable line. The stationery itself pays a good rate of profit and it affords a means of bring- ing in a good many people who buy other things. It is probably fair to say that even though school 49 Getting More Drug Store Business stationery and some other lines popular with children, paid no net profit of their own, still it would be good business for the store to carry them because of the other trade they produce, and because it is well worth while to get the youngest folks into the habit of coming to the store. If you can get school children coming to your store for things they want in the way of stationery and sweets, they will become familiar with your place and they will feel at home there. How are you going to get the school children's trade? By going after it, of course. If you just trust to its coming to you voluntarily, you may get some of it, but it will be a small proportion because somebody else will be trying hard to gobble up the lion's share. You should deliberately set about popularizing your store with the pupils of the schools. Put your school stationery, if possible, on a table low enough for the smaller children to see what you have. Keep at least some variety of stock there where the children can pick out what they want without assistance. They will soon learn that they can select a writing tablet or a pencil themselves and hand you the money when you are busy with other customers. Put plain prices on each item and encourage the self-serving idea, even though you do know that now and then you lose a little something through theft. If you are right on a street where most of the pupils must pass your store going to and from school, make up frequent and attractive displays of school SO Getting More Drug Store Business goods. Feature the line even a little out of pro- portion to its actual net value to you. You are looking farther ahead with these goods than merely to the immediate profit. You are looking for the results of getting the school age buyers into the habit of patronizing your store. Make up window displays that will have in them something to attract the interest of the school boys and girls. Show collections of photographs of movie stars, or of baseball players and other athletes. Have ingenious moving figures and other devices of a mechanical nature. Try carrying some of the most popular things in sporting goods ; feature occa- sional bargain lots of popular music, novelty school caps, school banners and pennants. Keep some- thing new of interest in the window all the time. You will know what are the interests of the school crowd. Don't let your windows become dull and uninteresting. Your windows are the best means of alluring the young folks and drawing them into spending money your way. If you are not right on the street leading to the school, perhaps a little off on a side street, you will have to exert yourself more in other directions to bring in that trade. Try to get a big sign that will be noticeable from the corner of the street that leads to the school. Crowd the presence of your store upon people's attention that far away. Seek busi- ness by soliciting it in every possible way. Dis- tribute circulars to the children as they leave school, calling attention to special values in school station- Getting More Drug Store Business ery. Get a mailing list of the pupils, classified so you can reach such grades or ages as you wish. Send them catchy advertisements which will tend to draw them to your store, even though it is a little out of the way. Dig up all the school novelties you can find in the trade, and feature something new and different con- stantly at an attractive price. Get novelty pencils and note books, made up with special covers with pictures of the school or some of its people. When you succeed in getting something different and special that makes a hit, every child in school will want it. Don't be satisfied with the stereotyped so-called novelties that every dealer can get. Devise novel- ties for yourself. Think up ways in which you can capitalize a special pencil with some local name on t, or a tablet with a special cover. Covers rather than contents sell the cheaper tablets . Figure on these things a long way ahead and get them made up for your use. Sell them at the prices that will bring the widest sale rather than the largest imme- diate profit. Keep some one novelty going all the while, something to attract the pupils. They will buy enough other things from you to make the novelty profitable indirectly. There are many ways in which you can bring the children into your store for something free and, though this may seem a nuisance to you, you may be sure that the druggist who keeps a string of children coming to his store for a free blotter or a 52 Getting More Drug Store Business post card of the school, or a ruler, or what not, is the druggist who is going to end by getting the bulk of their trade. You can make your store so interesting and attractive to children that they will popularize it among themselves, even if it is some distance out of their way. 53 CHAPTER VII Getting the Farmers' Trade The farmers are an important class of customers and their trade is as important as that of any class. The farmer is intelligent and informed about busi- ness methods. He knows what is what when it comes to the quality of the goods. He is no longer an easy mark for anything one wants to sell. The catalogue houses are constantly sending the farmer literature, calling his attention to goods in your line. While the farmer lives in the country, he is close to civilization and in a large proportion of cases gets his daily newspaper the same as we do. He is no longer a " Rube," but has become a business man. One of the best ways to hold the trade of the farmer is to get personally acquainted with him. When you know a farmer and are friendly with him, you can count on getting his trade. Of all classes of customers, he is the most interested in buying from someone with whom he is acquainted. Some of us may be just as ready to buy of a stranger as of a friend, but it is not so with the farmer. He likes to go to the drug store where he finds some- one he knows. This being the case, it ought to be obvious that one of the best things you can do to hold this trade is to get acquainted with as many farmers as possi- ble, and get as many as you can of them coming to your store on that account. Let the farmers make your store their headquar- 54 Getting More Drug Store Business ters, leaving their parcels there until they drive along to go home. Let them get warm there in winter and cool in summer. Set up the cigars occa- sionally. They appreciate little favors more than any other class. If you want things in their line, farm products, patronize them occasionally instead of the grocer. Turn about is fair play. Getting acquainted with the farmer when he comes to town is all right. Developing a friendship with him when he comes into the store is good. But better than these — a way that creates more interest on his part — is the visiting of him on his farm. If you will use your dull days and half days in trips out among the farmers, stopping and looking over their barns and dairies, inspecting their wheat fields and their stock, shaking hands with their working force and going into the house and getting acquainted with the women folks, too ; staying to dinner or supper, if you are asked ; using practical political methods — if you will adopt some such methods and practice them whenever you can, you will soon have those farmers coming to your store, and, further than that, you will develop some mighty pleasant acquaintances and get more enjoyment out of life. By taking along a clerk at such times you will increase the interest of the farmer in your business, because he will have two strings drawing him that way instead of one, and that clerk will develop more interest in the personality of the customers. Of course, no harm will be done by having along 55 Getting More Drug Store Business a good supply of cigars and candy, but such a trip is not the time to talk store business. Forget your own interests and get enthusiastic over those of the men you visit. If you are asked about anything connected with the store, that is different, when you have an opportunity. The farmers are particularly sensitive to any appearance indicating that the druggist feels in any way above them. You have to meet the farmer on an equal footing if you are going to hold him. He will not patronize a store where he thinks they are willing to take his money, but feel a little bit above him. As a matter of fact, there is just as much reason for the farmer feeling above a druggist as for the reverse. A snob is out of place in either class. When a farmer walks into your store, if anyone who sees him knows him by name — no matter if that one is busy — he should get a chance to call the farmer's name and greet him, and instead of merely passing him on to another clerk in an anony- mous way, introduce him to another, thus making a personal matter of it and extending that farmer's acquaintance in your store and making the personal element count farther. If you cannot get out to see the farmers, you can send them advertising, but you can go farther and write them personal letters that will help the ac- quaintanceship between you. You can issue a little store paper, filled half with advertisements and half reading matter, giving your farmer patrons, to whom 56 Getting More Drug Store Business the paper is mailed, the opportunity to advertise therein free any " Wants' 5 and " For Sale" items they will send in or bring in. Thus you are doing something for the farmer that is a service he will appreciate. I believe it will pay you to subscribe for two or three farm papers and read them sufficiently to be intelligent to a certain degree upon some subjects the farmer knows about. That will give you and him a common ground in conversation and you will both act more naturally. Another thing that will help will be to send for some of the more important U.S. Government Bul- letins covering subjects of interest to the farmers in your locality. If you know about these and have a list of them in your pocket, you will be in a position to give the farmer a tip now and then as to where he can find out what he wants to know about con- trolling some insect pest or blight. Then, too, you will find that you can develop a sale on some of your drugs through this very means. There are many things in the way of drugs that are constantly being recommended by the farm journals for use in exterminating this or that sort of worm, bug, or beetle, or for use in some sort of animal disease that is going the rounds among pigs, sheep, or cattle, like the measles running through a district school. If you can't read a farm paper and keep posted on such things, ask some farmer whom you know pretty well. He '11 give you some good tips. 57 Getting More Drug Store Business The farmers use more things in the way of what we call household drugs than almost any other class of trade. Advertising that quotes prices on this sort of thing will be read by them carefully. Some- thing in the way of a mailing card with a catchy heading and a bunch of low prices on goods like borax, ammonia, witch hazel, flavoring extracts, soaps, " salts' ' for man and beast, quinine pills, etc., etc., picking out for each lot of cards a group of seasonable goods, will bring business. Mailing cards sent to people in town will probably be left on the floor of the postoffice, but the farmer will take them home and read them. In the winter there is a steady demand for stock food, which, though sold by feed stores and all sorts of general stores, is a thing that druggists also can and do sell a great deal of. Get a good line that is well advertised in the farm journals and push it. It does not interfere with any other line of goods you handle, and for all you sell you will be just so much ahead. Stock food has to a great extent displaced the old-fashioned condition powders. It sells for cattle until they get out into the pasture, and it sells at all times for horses and other confined ani- mals. Most makers of stock food have a line of veterinary remedies as well which are good sellers. You will find that it will pay to keep them in stock and to let the farmers know that you have them. If you have the farmer in mind in writing your advertisements of goods you expect him to buy, you will come nearer writing something he will 58 Getting More Drug Store Business read than if you write with your own point of view uppermost. You will not have to write "down to " the farmer, but his point of view is different. The farmer often buys in larger quantities than the townspeople. His trade is valuable on this account. There was a day when he might drive up and ask for the proprietor and demand the best spot cash price on flaxseed meal in quantity. When the price was quoted, he would think it over, and say: "Well, I came down light today, and I can't carry that much, but you can weigh me out a pound and I'll get some more next time." The farmer does not have to do that today. He has the money to get what he wants and pay for it, but, neverthe- less, he is probably a closer buyer as to price than most classes of people. It is probably a good thing that he is. Most people are not careful enough, but it is this characteristic that makes it necessary to see that the catalogue houses don't get ahead of us too far in their price concessions — and apparent concessions. We can take a lesson from the mail order houses in the matter of persistence in asking the farmers for their trade. They not only go after the busi- ness ; they keep after it. They send their big cata- logue, and then they send along circulars and folders and special catalogues, and they keep that farmer reminded of their existence, and they keep asking him to buy from them until he just naturally does if without any thought of whether it is a good thing to do or not. Why can't we ask the farmer for his 59 Getting More Drug Store Business business as often and as intelligently as the cata- logue house? We certainly can ask him with a good deal more personal interest, and we have infi- nitely more reasons to give for his trading with us than has the mail order man. The idea of a druggist complaining about the loss of trade to a mail order house when he is not doing anything himself to offset the monthly, or, perhaps, almost weekly requests they send to his trade, seems to me rather childish. The way to get business is to go after it. The way to make sure of the mail order man getting it is to leave it to him to take. In a way the druggist may have the big catalogue to thank for some things. The farmer's wife, study- ing the S., R. & Co. book, sees in there many items in your line she would like to have which she did not know you keep, because you have never gone to the farmers' wives with a little booklet calling their attention to articles for comfort and conven- ience which they ought to know about. I have no doubt that many a call for toilet articles and spec- ialties in the drug store is due to the farmer folks having read about them in the mail order catalogue and tried the home store before sending away for them. You have countless opportunities to get advertis- ing matter about new goods into the farmer's family with little or no expense. The manufacturers will supply you with samples and booklets, and these may be inserted in parcels, put into the farmers' 60 Getting More Drug Store Business wagons and automobiles in the street, without cost for distribution. In this way you familiarize the people with things they did not know about, and you get the first chance at their business, instead of leaving it for them to learn about the goods first in a catalogue, thus thinking that you are behind the times. An almanac is a piece of advertising literature that the farming class value highly, and any sort of a booklet that you may get up with a little useful information in it, or a few pictures or jokes, will not be thrown away unread. Calendars are valued more highly in such cases, and are necessary to keep the good-will of your customers. A mailing list of the farmers who do or who can trade in your town is invaluable. Keep it up to date and use it often. A first-class way to reach them with prices is to typewrite a letter, quoting prices on the goods that are especially timely, and dupli- cate it on a mimeograph or something of that kind. If you have the apparatus (and duplicators are cheap), this is a form of advertising that will not cost much more than the postage. A pen-written letter can be duplicated in the same way, and then every letter made personal by an individual heading. You must, of course, put yourself out to be polite to the wife and children of the farmer, because he and they are more sensitive than the townspeople and are inclined to be watching for slights. Make the farmers' children want to come to your store and make them feel at home there, and you will 61 Getting More Drug Store Business have done one of the best things you could do in developing an interest in your place of business among the out-of-town class. You ought to have copies of the latest mail order catalogues in your store in order to know what those competitors are offering your trade, and if you can meet the prices in them, you ought to give publicity to the fact. If you can offer as good a proposition as the Larkin outfit, let the public know about it, and tell the farmers that you will fill soap club orders and give a premium equal to that of the mail order house. Study the propositions of everybody who is trying to get orders from your customers by mail and beat them at their own game, if you can. If you cannot do that, distract people's attention from other folks' game by making them think about some plan of your own. The drug store has a chance to emphasize the importance of buying in person and seeing that the goods are properly handled, properly cared for in stock and that the best for the purpose is selected. In advertising to compete with the mail order house, create a definite impression as far as you can in favor of goods from a properly accredited pharmacy, under the oversight of a licensed pharmacist, rather than from a house which merely handles everything of that sort like all other lines, taking the same care of druggists' sundries that is taken of plough shoes and strap hinges. The professional standing and professional knowl- edge of the druggist is something the mail order 62 Getting More Drug Store Business house does not duplicate, and what harm is there in calling attenting to this fact ? Emphasize the fact that in your store the goods are looked after with a view to keeping them free from contamination, and that instead of being packed and shipped by cheap help with no professional interest in the welfare of the user, they are handled by careful druggists and by clerks trained to the druggists' point of view. It is worth while to advertise to the farmers the fact that you are qualified to put up all kinds of vet- erinary receipts in the right way and at right prices. The farmers' wives are great dye users. They do their dyeing mostly in the spring and fall, and adver- tising that calls their attention to that sort of thing will pay well. Have all the package dyes that are in demand and be ready to put up the coloring receipts of the old-fashioned kind. Have a book of those receipts handy yourself and encourage people to use that kind. It makes more work, but it pays, a good deal better. Be ready for the time when orchards are to be sprayed to protect the blossoms against the insects. Blue vitrol is much used for that. Advertise such goods at low prices in quantity and get the big sales. They will be more profitable than the small lots that pay a larger percentage. Disinfectants for use in the stables, etc., are always sellers, and the cheapest generally sells best and pays best. Don't recommend a worthless article. Paris green and other potato bug poisons are money makers. Have all the kinds there is a sale 63 Getting More Drug Store Business for, and have them when the first call comes. Be ready early with a stock of hellebore and insect powder, and never run out. A good line of dog medicines will sell to the farmers. They will buy stuff to make hens lay. A good strong horse liniment is a thing worth pushing if it is one that you know is all right. Farmers are good patent medicine buyers. If there is any time when a man is justified in recom- mending his own preparations in preference to those of the proprietary maker (and some would have us believe there is not), it is when the country people come a-purchasing and give you a good loophole for a little talk about your own non-secret line. They are people who trust in your knowledge of medi- cines and are ready to take your suggestion that you can save them some money on a remedy that you can guarantee. I believe in treating the pro- prietary men fairly, especially if they are the ones that treat the druggist fairly, but I believe likewise that in business it is a case of every man for himself. It is easier now to sell a gold brick to a man who has spent his life in a city than to a country bred person. The farmers know what they are about. They are particularly intelligent as a class. They are good buyers, and they stick well to one store when they have found the one that suits them. Don't neglect your town trade, of course, but bear on hard all the while on the farmers. They are the backbone of the nation's commerce and you can make them the backbone of yours. 64 CHAPTER VIII Preparing For Spring Trade This is a good chapter to read late in the winter when you begin to look ahead to the coming of spring, when you can see that the sun is beginning to shine on both sides of the fence, and the seed catalogues are clogging up the mails. You should be getting ready to take advantage of every opportunity that the coming of spring offers. There will be more business in many lines and the druggists who are ready will be the ones to profit by it. What will you do to make your business boom? Let me suggest some of the things you can do. How about your window displays ? Are they going to be any better, any more interesting and alluring than they were a year ago ? Have you im- proved any in window dressing in a year ? Can you improve the lighting of your windows ? Have you bettered your window trimming equipment any in a year ? Are you any better at making window sign cards ? It will pay you to see what you can get in the way of window fixtures that will make it easier to get up good displays and make them up in less time than it takes to arrange them without any but home-made apparatus. Spend a few dollars for win- dow display helps. Get better brushes too for mak- ing signs. See what the electric light people can offer in the way of better lights. Write to the manu- facturers of the lines you sell and ask them what 65 Getting More Drug Store Business they can send you to help in making window dis- plays of their goods. Get all the help you can in this important part of your work, and get it as soon as you can. You will find your drug journals help- ful in suggestions in both reading and advertising pages. But all the suggestions and ideas and offers of helps free or for sale will not help if you do not heed them. It is important that you keep your eyes open for new goods and new lines that are coming into popu- larity. If you think to hold the patronage of just your old customers with nothing more than the same old seasonable goods you offered them last spring and the spring before, you are fooling your- self. New things are constantly being put on the market and being advertised to the general public. New spring remedies, new sundries, new side lines, new soaps, dentifrices, toilet specialties of all kinds. If you try to operate on the basis that what was good enough for your trade last year will be good enough this year, your logic may be sound enough, but it will not keep the public from wanting the new things they learn about through magazine advertis- ing or through your competitors 1 displays. Keep your stock interesting by the addition of new items. Buy as little as you like of the new things. Be cautious, according to your best judg- ment, but don't be a back number and carry only the same old lines from year to year. The interspersing of novelties, even if some of them are freaks, will interest people in your store . 66 Getting More Drug Store Business Your customers will buy about the same type of tooth brushes year after year and new, freakish styles may not make good, but for all that, it will pay you to show the freaks, just to call attention to your tooth brush stock as a whole, and to show that you are up to date. Don't let the public get the idea that other druggists introduce new things while you are in a rut as far as stock goes. Easter is an opportunity for featuring some of your goods. Perfumes may well be given a strong Easter boost. If you want to get the perfume busi- ness and keep it, you certainly need to keep informed about what is new along that line. If you are the type of druggist who is still sticking to white rose, jockey club and violet, and paying no attention to newer odors or to imported perfumes, you will not get the desirable trade in that line. Stock some of the popular French perfumes and stock the new and fashionable American goods. You may not sell much of the high-priced French stuff, but its presence in your perfume case helps to attract the women. You will, naturally, keep white rose as long as anybody wants to buy it, but if you are after trade, you will make it obvious that your perfume stock is up to date. It is the same in all toilet articles. Women are always looking for the new thing. They may come back to an old favorite after trying the new goods, or they may be satisfied after having merely looked at the new things. But unless you have what is new, they are going to shop around at other stores 6 7 Getting More Drug Store Business until they find it, whether they buy or not. You don't want your customers going to other drug stores for goods you do not have. You may be able to arouse a new interest in your toilet goods simply by placing them in a different show case or by moving the old show case to a dif- ferent position. If you have not this opportunity, spend money enough to get a new and suitable case that will enable you to feature the goods to better advantage, attracting more attention to them. The purchase of a new show case or two may be the best investment you can make. You certainly ought to keep buying such display equipment until you have enough of the best to show your stock. Don't put off buying cases until you can buy enough for a whole new equipment. Buy as you can spare the money. Each case, as you add it, will help make money to buy another, and you can duplicate standard cases from the same maker if you like. Are you ready and have you the stock ordered to enable you to make a strong appeal for trade on the lines that have a special spring appeal ? How about sponges and chamois skins? You ought to be well filled up on those goods. You can buy chamois skins by the kip and sponges by the bale at this time of the year with the certainty of the best selling season of the year on .those things right ahead, though in the fall you might find it foolish in your case, to buy in such quantities. The automobile season is opening and there is no reason why you should let the garages and accessory 68 Getting More Drug Store Business dealers get away from you the motorists' business on sponges and chamois skins. You might well go after some of their business by stocking polishes and featuring those and some other things for auto- mobile use. A display in the window, showing a large quantity of sponges, with a sign card, a This is the Place to Buy Sponges," will influence observers to believe in the tradition that the druggist keeps the best sponge values. Advertise sponges and chamois skins and impress the public with the belief that the drug store can give them the best value in that line. Mail out a circular or form letter to motorists, sug- gesting that they get a new sponge and chamois for the opening season. Keep watch of those who buy new cars and drop them such a letter. Then, in the matter of moth preventives, this is the time to be thinking how to make your sales as large as possible. People are apt to buy such things where they happen to see them on sale. Housewives may get them at the grocer's or the department store If you advertise for that business first, particularly if you mail out a good advertisement, you are pretty sure to get the bulk of the business in that line. You certainly can get it by going after it. So stock up with enough of the goods to make it worth while to work hard to sell them. It is the same way with insecticides. The coming of the gardening season will bring a great demand for such things from some store. It may go to some other drug store or even to a hardware store if you 69 Getting More Drug Store Business are neglecting your opportunities. If you make no effort to get the business, you will have no just reason for complaint when you do not get it. Don't be finding fault with people for going to hardware stores and groceries for goods you think they ought to buy from you. You can get that business by going after it, and if the hardware man and the grocer are better business getters than you, they are entitled to the business. It is up to you to go after the business, not to sit and wait for it to come voluntarily. You can't wish business into your store. It is a good plan to inject all the newness you can into your store and its stock and methods for the coming of spring. It is the new thing that is going to interest people, and the new methods of adver- tising and display will attract attention when they might never turn their heads to look if you were merely following the old cut and dried plans of a year ago. Start something new in your store, put new life into your work, new activity into your ad- vertising and display. Add anything new you can afford in the way of equipment, and stock evqry live new item that will have an interest for your cus- tomers. You can sell a little of anything new that is worth stocking for its novelty sake. The spring business is good for these who go after it, especially for those who get an early start. 70 CHAPTER IX The Motorists' Business It is good sense for a druggist who wants to increase his business to get a complete mailing list of the automobile owners of his community and to go after their business, not as motorists, but as prospective purchasers of drug-store merchandise. Because all the people on this list have cars it is possible to use that fact as a means of developing interest in what the druggist wishes to say to them. He can appeal to them in ways that would not inter- est non-owners. Here is a letter, for example, that has a special automobile note : Dear Madam: — It is a great convenience to be able to use your automobile for shopping. It brings you right to the door of the store with no inconvenience, even in bad weather. We are particularly glad to have people shop with us by automobile, and you need feel no hesitancy at any time abou driving up in front of our store and waiting for us to come out and serve you in your car. It is our business to keep watch of the curb outside and know when a customer is waiting out there. If you drive up, you may be sure you will be seen and will be waited on just the instant there is a clerk available, usually without any delay. You do not inconvenience us by asking us to wait on you in your automobile. That is a part of our business. We are here to serve you in the way that pleases you best. Yours very truly, The Markland Drug Company. 71 Getting More Drug Store Business It will be objected to by some that this plan of encouraging people to shop from outside will reduce sales by preventing customers seeing and buying at sight some of the self -selling merchandise displayed inside. So far as that goes, it is true. But the waiting customer in the car has the window displays right at hand which offsets that loss to some extent. The clerk has an opportunity to suggest other pur- chases just as when inside, with perhaps an advan- tage in attention because he is pleasing the customer by coming out to the curb to do business. The big advantage of offering this kind of service, however, and taking pains to see that the service rendered is up to the promises made for it, lies in the fact that it brings much new trade to the store — trade that ordinarily would whiz by. On an auto- mobile mailing list of the kind mentioned will be many people who have found other druggist unwill- ing to go outdoors to get their trade, or who have found that they received no attention when they drove up in front. Automobile riders are usually not unreasonable in what they want. Those who want the dealer to wait on them at the curb have reasons for it. They may be accustomed to that kind of service and will- ing to pay for it. They may be semi-invalids who, if they find they can get personal service of the kind they want right in their car, will give a store a good part of their business. They may be people in a hurry who think to save time by snappy curb service. 72 Getting More Drug Store Business It is not difficult to arrange to have the curb watched for waiting cars. If the windows are not trimmed up so high that the curb cannot be seen from behind the counters within, the nearest unoc- cupied clerk can go out when a car hauls up in front. If all the clerks are occupied, perhaps there is one who has a customer who will excuse him for a moment willingly. At the worst, there is only a little delay before some one will be available to go out and take the order. Objections to this sort of thing are the objections of convenience and expediency. As a matter of fact, service of this kind will get business — and that is the object of most retailers. Sales of candy should be easily increased among motorists by the use of such a letter as the follow- ing, mailed at the proper seasons : Dear Madam: — Every motor trip is made more pleasant by the addition of a box of candy, and you usually do take along some candy or stop and get some on the way. Let us suggest that you swing around by our store the next time you go out and get one of our dollar boxes. This is a box in which all the price goes into a pound of as good mixed chocolates as can be made. No frills on the box. You don't care for a fancy box in the car. Delicious cream and nut centers in just the flavors every one likes. And if you want anything in nut bars, popular-priced packets of mints or salted nuts or chewing gum, we have them all and will be glad to bring out an assortment. Just ask to see our " Motor Tray " of candy. We have a tray of all the best packages from nickel packets up to our famous dollar box. We bring the tray out for your selection- 73 Getting More Drug Store Business When going motoring, this gives you quick and complete service. You get what you want without delay. Yours very truly, The Markland Drug Company. For stimulating fountain business a letter of this kind may be tried to advantage : Dear Madam : — There is no better ice cream in town than ours. A real cream ice cream, with the best of flavorings and the greatest care in making it delicious. Real fruit and real fruit juices for use in it and with it. Luscious fresh strawberries in season. Our chocolate ice cream has more of the real chocolate flavor than any other we know. When motoring, stop for a few minutes and enjoy a good ice cream refreshment at our fountain. We have plenty of small tables and seats for your con- venience. Or if you wish, we will serve you with what you want right in the car. Ice cream cones, of course. When you want ice cream at home, stop and take home a pint or a quart of whatever you want. We have bottled beverages on ice all the time and can supply you with those for home use. A very fine ginger ale at #2.60 a dozen and a rebate of 5 cents each for bottles returned. How about bottled drinks for picnics or roadside lunches ? How about ice cream or other things for the same lunch? Let us supply your wants. Yours very truly, The Markland Drug Company. These letters suggest services that are to be ren- dered. That suggestion about a ready prepared tray of various popular candies to be taken out to the car saves the rather unsatisfactory method of carrying 74 Getting More Drug Store Business out a small assortment in the hands while trying to tell about what other things the store offers. To provide such an outfit it is necessary only to paint up a flat box, or a basket, and keep it filled with an assortment, each item having a price card on it. To some such a plan may savor too much of the train butcher's methods ; it may even appear undignified. But there is no money in being dignified and cus- tomers don't care anything about it either. In taking care of this out-in-the-car trade, the druggist should not appear hurried or act as if he were being imposed upon. Even the dealer who is not making a drive for this kind of business cannot afford to drive it away or to offend the people by giving them indifferent service. There are more or less items of stock that are directly of interest to the motorist as such. He needs sponges, chamois skins, a can of light oil like "3-in-i," distilled water, occasionally rubber hose and adhesive tape, and other things in the drug line. It will pay to go after his trade on these goods and sell him before he has bought elsewhere. In certain cases, because of location, or in order to hold trade, it will prove profitable to stock some accessories. The druggist who is himself a motorist will feel a greater interest in such things. Trade of this kind may be attracted by placing at the edge of the city on each much traveled road a large signboard which reads something like this : 75 Getting More Drug Store Business ROAD INFORMATION FREE. Brown's Drug Store, 253 Broad St. (This Street). Maps, Blue Books, Hotel List. A sign like this, large enough so the tourist can- not miss it, and set so it can be easily read while going at 30 miles an hour, will bring more than enough people to pay for its installation. It will also pay in many instances to make the drug store headquarters for motor literature. A supply of maps and blue books will bring direct profits, while ability and willingness to impart infor- mation about routes and road conditions, hotels and garages, will, if properly advertised, bring many motorists to the store. A plan that is often worked to advantage is to have a small bulletin board on which are displayed daily bulletins as to the condition of the main automobile thoroughfares and notes of any changes in detours and construction work. Another plan that has been used is that of a little map showing the main roads into town and so marked as to indicate the location of the store issu- ing the map. This map can be printed on a folder with such advertising as the druggist wants to run, and the folders distributed gratis to motorists. Two druggists in neighboring towns might com- bine to make up a map showing the routes in the vicinity of the two places and the road from one 76 Getting More Drug Store Business store to the other. The distribution of these by both stores would help each greatly and would be of value in landing the tourist business, which would incline to] drop into both of the stores for road information as well as for drug store needs. Automobile owners are increasing in numbers daily, and the druggists who go after their trade in an aggessive way are the ones who are going to reap the greatest harvests. The returns are good from such effort and expense as may be put forth along this line. 77 CHAPTER X Selling Dental Supplies Every dentist is a steady buyer of many things the druggist could supply as well as the dental sup- ply house, and usually at as low a price, quality for quality. Of course it is easy for the dentist to give the dental house his order for alcohol, peroxide of hydrogen, absorbent cotton and a score of other items at the same time he orders his gold and his amalgam filling materials. But there is nothing to prevent the druggist making it just as easy to get these things from him. Business of this character is pretty likely to go to the man who goes after it. The dentist who has abundant good intentions with regard to patronizing home stores forgets them when the smooth traveling salesman from the dental supply house begins to talk. Or, if he does remember his local friends, he is apt to think that " It doesn't matter this time. This is such a small item I won't bother to go to the drug store for it. I'll just have it come along with the rest." Many pages of drug-trade journals have been given up to urging druggists to visit the physicians regularly and solicit their business, but there has not been enough mention of the dentists. This is probably due to the fact that it is not so many years ago that the dentist did not use anything the drug- gist had for sale. His equipment was mainly forceps and painful-looking little steel tools. 78 Getting More Drug Store Business Now the dentist uses counter-irritants to stop inflammation in the root of the tooth, and he needs various combinations for this purpose of iodine, tincture of aconite, oil of cloves, etc. If he has occasion to inject a disinfectant into the root of a tooth he needs such things as carbolic acid or a diluted iodine tincture, or he may (though con- demned by the best dentists) use peroxide in that way. He uses chloroform to dry out cavities to be filled. He uses alcohol in his lamps. He uses antiseptic washes. He uses tooth powders and dentifrices. If he is of an inventive tendency he frequently experiments in his laboratory with com- binations that call for other drug-store supplies. He uses absorbent cotton in the patient's mouth. He packs absorbent cotton, dental rolls or dental napkins around a tooth he is filling, and though these are dental specialties, the druggist can supply them from his surgical supply house. If the town is a large one with many dentists, a circular letter might well be sent out monthly to each one of them. This letter should act as a means of keeping the dentist informed of the fact that a live drug store is after his business. Then when a representative of the store calls to solicit an order, his identity is already established. A good form of letter to use is along the following line and each time it should differ in form and contain some special mention of one featured article : Dear Doctor : — As a good dentist you make it a point to buy the best quality of dental supplies. 79 Getting More Drug Store Business As good druggists we make it a point to sell the best. Are you satisfied with the peroxide of hydrogen you are getting? Are you also satisfied with its price ? We have a grade we recommend particularly for dental work. It is the best in the market The astonishing thing about it is that we can sell it to you in pint bottles at a price no higher than you usually pay for a grade that is perhaps somewhat inferior. Full pints, delivered at your office, with our quality guar- antee on every bottle, for 35 cents. When you need anything a drug store sells, call us. We have a quick delivery service that won't keep you waiting. Yours very truly, Brown's Drug Store. These form letters may be made in duplicate on the typewriter and the individual names filled in afterward, or if the edition is large enough to make it desirable, a duplicator may be used. Where the town is small and there are but three or four den- tists, the druggist can write individual personal let- ters with a pen if he has no typewriter. The more personal the letters the more valuable as a means of advertising. Where some special proprietary preparation of interest to the dentist is stocked, it may be advisa- ble to insert with these letters a piece of advertising regarding it. An advertising blotter in the letter each month may prove useful to the dentist and help keep the store in his mind a little longer. But the way to get the business developed is to call on this trade regularly and by sampling and special prices get it started away from the supply houses. 80 Getting More Dgug Store Business Most dentists have occasion to recommend to their patients now and again some kind of dentifrice. The patients ask, " What tooth powder ought I to use," or some similar question, and the druggist ought to have the dentists on his list favorably dis- posed toward some preparation in his store. He should devote his energy along the dentifrice line to demonstrating the superiority of his best powder and proving to the profession that it is worth rec- ommendation. When a druggist finds a dentist who has a set powder that he insists upon advising people to buy, instead of wasting time trying to wean him away from that powder, he may better see that he has a good stock of it and then induce the dentist to sug- gest that it can be bought at his particular store. A similar condition will be found to exist in the matter of tooth brushes. Many dentists have formed prejudicial preferences for certain makes of brushes, and rather than combat them by arguing about the brush matter, it is wise to carry a complete line of those brushes, and thus get the advantage of the dentist's preference. Better than any kind of argument or advertising about these things is the supplying of the dentist with samples of powder, liquid dentifrice or brush. The dentist is a man, as a rule, who likes to think he has found out things for himself. He does not like to admit that any druggist may know more than he does about things in his own line — and this is not a peculiarity of dentists alone, either. 81 Getting More Drug Store Business Such dental specialties as the dentist thinks he could not get from a druggist are aseptic dental napkins, absorbent cotton, dental rolls, certain kinds of dental floss, etc. These goods are not regularly stocked at the drug store, and they need not be. They can be sold usually to the dentist at the same price he pays for them in the dental-supply house, and yet give the druggist a small profit. The busi- ness in this line can be made profitable by taking orders in advance and not carrying the goods in the store. When about to send a quantity order, for instance, to a surgical-supply house, by calling on all the dentists in a town a considerable order for these dental specialties may be included. Of course, the druggist must himself be informed about the goods, and it will usually be well for him to go to some dentist who is a personal friend and talk over the matter with him, getting pointers on what items are most salable. The druggist should make it a point to see that every dentist employed by himself or any member of his family or store force realizes that the store is watching his purchases of drug-store goods and expecting a proper reciprocity on his part. When a druggist is paying his good money to a dentist year after year, as most of us unfortunately are, the dentist ought to be willing and even glad to buy anything he can from his patient, in order to show his appreciation of the patronage he gets. A good many dentists have the habit of carrying a small stock of tooth powder and giving away free 82 Getting More Drug Store Business a bottle now and then. This is a practice that is no longer of any advantage to the dentist, and costs the drug store a sale. A little missionary work along this line will often induce the dentist to cease the practice. If he is supplied with neat cards, each bearing a prescription for a bottle of the desired tooth powder, he is apt to hand these out and thus save the cost of the powder. The druggist can easily agree that if at any time the dentist wishes to make the patient a present of the powder, he can so indicate on the card prescription, and the powder will be charged to the doctor at just what he would have to pay for it if he were buying stock to give away in his office. There are some dentists who will be tempted to send orders to a store that agrees to give them a commission on them. These men, like the physi- cians who want a commission on a prescription, are not many, and the way they are handled must de- pend upon the individual druggist's position on that question. Where the relations between the druggist and some one dentist are particularly friendly, a good deal of benefit may accrue to each from the willing- ness to work together — the dentist sending his patients to this store for goods recommended, and the druggist referring all inquiries for a "good den- tist " to the dentist acquaintance. No one individual deal thus brought about is likely to be of great value, but every dentist realizes what it may be worth to him to have a new family in town 83 Getting More Drug Store Business started with him, and the druggist knows that a customer of some other drug store sent specifically to his store by the dentist may become a regular patron. The higher class professional man the dentist is, the farther his recommendation of a druggist will go. Many a patient who has always bought Jones' tooth powder will in the course of a year be changed over to some dentifrice recommended by the den- tist. And if the new dentifrice works well, as of course it will, if used as directed, that patient becomes a permanent user and also a walking advertisement for the article every time dentifrices or dentists are mentioned. The makers of proprietaries that are of dental value are usually ready to sample the dentists. Take note of the various goods of the sort in stock and write the makers, asking for samples for the den- tists. It is better to deliver them personally rather than have it done by the agent of the manufacturer. In the latter instance the other drug stores will profit by the sampling as much as you will. Among other lines sampled to dentists are malted milk, milk of magnesia, tooth powders and liquids and pastes, mouth washes, antiseptic solutions, den- tal plasters, dental floss, anti-pain tablets, etc. The personal work will get the greatest results, and the druggist who can make the dentists his friends will get their business when he goes after it 84 CHAPTER XI Selling Olive Oil The demand for olive oil, both as a food and as a medicine, has in the past few years surpassed the wildest expectations of the manufacturers of two decades ago — and the end is not yet. This is an article the demand for which can be stimulated almost indefinitely. It has merit and it is harmless, rarely used to excess and possesses no reaction. Its medicinal effect is absolute and not merely transitory. Olive oil possesses a food value beyond almost any other article used as a food. It can be used by persons in delicate health as well as by the most robust. It is always safe and always valuable. It is indicated in practically all wasting diseases, in cases of malnutrition and in all persons of low vitality. It is prescribed by physicians. It is recommended by the lay public. It is enormously popular as a salad component for the table. It is equally popular as a strength -maker for self -medication. It has at once the selling qualities of a patent medicine and the virtues of a health food. The druggist can recommend it without fear to anyone. Under such conditions it is not remarkable that the sales of olive oil have steadily gone up. It offers the drug store a chance to increase its sales right among its regular customers without having to draw 85 Gettino More Drug Store Business upon the trade of someone else, which may be harder to get. And still a very large proportion of your cus- tomers do not yet realize the advantages to be gained from the use of olive oil in greater quantities. The sale of olive oil for table purposes has until lately been largely in the hands of the grocers and provision dealers, and this has been partly because people naturally go to such stores for food products and partly because the grocers have gone after the business. The time has come for the druggists to get after the olive oil business, in a way they never did before — and get it. One of the first necessities is for the dealer to find out what constitutes good olive oil. The fact that it is technically pure is not of itself an evidence of quality. Olive oil may be made from nothing but olives and yet be a poor article. There are olives and olives. It is entirely believable that an oil might be part cotton seed, and even then be better than one made from poor olives. Just as one might make cider from the cullings of the orchard, gnarled and knotty little runts of apples, worm-eaten and partly decayed^ and still call it pure cider, so one might make olive oil that would be of no higher grade, and yet call it pure olive oil. If possible, one should buy the oil from a firm whose word is absolutely reliable, so that when they say their oil is made from selected olives, it can be depended upon that such is the case. The best 86 Getting More Drug Store Business experts in the olive oil trade claim that the best oil is made from olives from the oldest trees. The older the trees the better the oil. Let the dealer take up the details of the manufacture of a brand of oil with the importers and find out just what he is getting so that he can recommend it to his cus- tomers right up to the limit. It goes without saying that a man who wants to boom the sale of any article ought to be posted on the history and uses of that article as well as upon the facts regarding its manufacture. It is not necessary to go into the history of olive oil here, as that can be learned from any encyclo- pedia, but I am going to enumerate some of the uses of the oil for which it may be recommended in the advertising I hope you are going to do. That olive oil is particularly valuable for stomach troubles, is indicated by the rarity of such maladies among the natives of the great olive oil producing countries of Europe. Eaten with food, olive oil is a great aid to digestion and assists the alimentary canal in taking care of food throughout its length. Olive oil is easily taken and easily assimilated. When your joints get rusty and need lubricating, olive oil will do the business. You know of people of dry temperament physically, the lean and Cassius kind of folk, whose knee joints grate when they go down stairs. They have articular rheumatism in the knees, shoulders or hips. The synovial fluid that oils the joints is lacking. The use of olive oil internally will produce this fluid, and the applica- 87 Getting More Drug Store Business tion of the oil to the joints will help also. Recom- mend olive oil for rheumatism of all kinds. It oils up the dry joints and it increases the vitality where rheumatism is due to run-down systems. For massage work there is no patent preparation that will exceed olive oil in results or in safety of use. It removes the wrinkles and it fills up the hollows and it is absolutely harmless. The olive oil users have little need for a beauty doctor to help them to retain their youthful appearance. The oil will do more for them than any other medium. Olive oil applied well to the scalp and rubbed in thoroughly, washing the hair afterward with Castile soap, will prove one of the best of hair growers. For people who are afraid of appendicitis — and that includes everybody who hasn't already been operated upon, and some that have — there is noth- ing like olive oil. It relieves their intestinal trouble and their minds too. It is the best of anything for this condition. Then, too, you can recommend the oil for liver complaint, bladder and kidney diseases, tubercular affections, grippe, fevers, earache, burns, scalds, cuts and wounds. Besides these uses you know of many others that have developed in your own experience. Having posted yourself on the making of oil and its uses and its physical properties, the next thing is to stock up with a line that you can stand behind. The sizes of packages that you can handle depend upon competition somewhat. You must meet the grocers in price, quantity and quality being equah Getting More Drug Store Business One druggist, successfully handling olive oil, does not carry a great variety. He has just one grade of oil he considers equal to any. This he has in quarts in tin, stone jugs and five-gallon cans from which he takes his bulk stock. This latter he sells by the full pint at a price to match the grocer's short pint, container included. He advertises and recommends the two original packages on account of the advan- tages of having the oil in light-proof containers. Stone jugs are particularly to be recommended as being light-proof, air-tight, and sufficiently absorbent to take up the minute, invisible particles of moisture from the oil. Of course the window displays help sell olive oil if they have good show cards, telling the grade of the oil, mentioning some of its uses and quoting prices, calling particular attention to the fact that I give full measure : a pint where a pint is claimed, etc. A good olive oil booklet mailed to a good list, is one of the best and most productive of advertising plans. Sometimes manufacturers have booklets that they will supply for mailing. A little eight-page booklet that will slip into a No. 6^ envelope is about the right style. Call it, on the cover, " Your Good Health/' Then devote a page to the oil quality, then one to the style of packages with their advantages and prices, and fill the remain- ing pages with the mention in detail of the actual uses to which the oil can be put — with some good cooking recipes for its use if you have room. The newspaper advertising must be made also to 8 9 Getting More Drug Store Business help the oil sales. Each individual advertisement ought to bring up one special point about the oil you sell and make that point plain to readers, always giving the prices and emphasizing the full measure idea, for here is where the druggist has an advan- tage. Practically no glass packages of oil put up by the manufacturers are full pints or half-pints. They may pass for such, but they will not hold out. The grocers do not talk half-pints or pints ; they talk 25c, 50c, 75c bottles, etc. And referring again to window displays, do not make the error made by many grocers of exhibiting olive oil in glass in the windows, as the strong light will injure the flavor. In the window use only the opaque containers. Cultivate in your customers the quart can habit, or even half -gallon cans. Some people need only a little, but a very large proportion of the purchasers of oil can be induced to buy a quart can if the right sort of salesmanship is used and the guarantee is promised that if the oil does not prove satisfactory in every way the can may be returned and the money will be refunded. Get the little users up to the quart size whenever possible, and it will increase the consumption of oil. Also there is a market among the hotels and boarding houses for the larger cans, gallons or five gallons, and this trade must be sought. It is not likely to come of its own accord. If you live in a small place you can canvass these people. If you live in a larger town, mail advertis- ing to them if you prefer. 90 Getting More Drug Store Business You need not be afraid of overdoing the olive oil business, as long as you do not spend more money in pushing it than the profits warrant. The busi- ness is capable of great extension. It has by no means reached the limit of its development, and the druggist who needs the money and finds himself limited in other directions has here an outlet which should keep him busy for a time at least. 9i CHAPTER XII More Hot Water Bottle Sales Most families keep a hot water bottle hanging up in the bath room and when that one springs a leak they may be depended upon to buy another — before long. This means that there is a regular demand for hot water bottles to keep up the normal supply in users' hands. But it must not be forgotten that there are many households where the hot water bottle has not been introduced, and many others where its uses are not fully appreciated and where one is so seldom employed that it lasts indefinitely. It is within the power of the druggist to increase the number of users of hot water bottles and to increase as well the number of ways in which each is used. Consumption of goods of this class can be very much enlarged, and trade in them stimulated, by advertising partly along the educational line. Of course the logical time to push sales is in the fall, when there is the argument of coming cold weather and approaching winter. As a matter of fact there is almost as much need for hot water bottles for many purposes in warm weather, but the public does not realize it. The sale during the winter is so certain that the druggist, basing his purchase on the number of bottles sold the previous winter, can afford to make a considerable purchase early in the fall, with a view 92 Getting More Drug Store Business to getting the best price and securing a quantity that will make a good showing and enable him to make displays conspicuous by their volume. A first opening and display, coupled with gener- ous advertising of the line, should take place while the stock is at its high water mark. There should be a window display with one or two windows filled with the goods. Little displays showing the differ- ent grades and sizes should be made around the store inside. Put a display of the special, low-priced bottle on one showcase, of the medium-priced on another. Show the bottles all over the store, no matter how large it may be. Arrange things so that if a cus- tomer has possibly got in without seeing the goods in the window he cannot get out without having seen them inside the store. In order to make these displays and the window trim all work together, the cards on the goods ought to have a certain uniformity of plan. They should be similar in general appearance, and while on each there should be a statement as to quality and the price of the bottle, there should also be an inscrip- tion something like this : " See other displays of other grades and the big display in the window ! " Hot water bottles are so attractively put up now- adays that they can be made to look very well indeed in a display. And where the colors of the box do not bring out the shade of the rubber in good con- trast, a sheet of paper of suitable color can be slipped in behind the bottle. The little matter of getting 93 Getting More Drug Store Business a red or a white or a gray hot water bottle on a strongly contrasting background has everything to do with making the goods stand out. Neat price cards on a color of bristol board that contrasts with the color of the hot water bottle when laid against the bottle itself show up strongly, though they ought not to cover up the name on the bottle. Though it may seem that the name of the bottle is not of much value, still it ought to be played for what it is worth. No one is going to consider the name anything against a bottle, and many people who have had a bottle of some one brand that has proved satisfactory will look for that name when contemplating another purchase. On this account it is desirable to continue year after year to stock as far as it proves satisfactory a bottle with a name known to your customers. If a novelty in the way of a feature can be intro- duced into your window display of the bottle it will help attract attention ; and if it can be something calling attention particularly to the strength of the bottle it will make sales. A good way to show up the strength and conse- quent durability of your best hot water bottle is to fill one and put it in the center of the display, lay a board across it, and on this board place a large weight. You have probably heard hot water bottle salesmen tell of the tremendous pressure they have known their bottles to withstand. Arrange to demonstrate this to the public by laying a board 94 Getting More Drug Store Business across one or two filled bottles and placing thereon a barrel of something that looks heavy but will not be heavy enough to burst the bottles. You will have to decide for yourself whether the bottles will hold up a barrel of flour or a barrel of water or a half-barrel of something. If you wanted to demonstrate with a man in the window, you could hire a heavy man for the pur- pose, filling the hot water bottle, screwing in the cap, and then laying the bottle on the floor and having the man stand on it to show its strength. Along with the window display, the newspaper and other advertising ought to be worked to the fullest extent. Here is a good form of a newspaper advertisement to use in opening the season in the fall: CHILLY NIGHTS COMING. Before you start the fires this fall there will be many nights when the air will be frosty. Don't try to go to sleep with cold feet. Unless you sleep warm you cannot sleep well. Get a hot water bottle the first thing instead of waiting until the thermometer hits zero. Get the benefit of it now when you need it even more than in colder weather when the heat is turned on. We can fit anybody's pocketbook with a hot water bottle price : 78 cents; $1.00; £1.25; $1.50; and up to $2.75. All sizes and all grades and any color. The good ones are all war- ranted, some for one year and some for two years. Brown's Pharmacy. Here is another form of advertisement : 95 Getting More Drug Store Business HOW'S YOUR HOT WATER BOTTLE? Did you finish up the one you had last winter so it is of no use now ? Better look it up and see about it before you find yourself needing it some night only to discover then that it is played out. Find the leak today, if there is one, and get prepared for the coming of cold feet, rheumatism, neuralgia or anything that is helped by the direct application of heat. Many a pain will yield to a hot water bottle and save taking medicine your stomach does not want We have hot water bottles from a pint to 3 quarts. We have them from 48 cents to $2.50. For #1.75 we can give you a very heavy pure gum bottle warranted for two years, 2-quart size. This is our own guar- antee, and if the bottle fails bring it back to us and get another without trouble or expense. No red tape tied around this guarantee. Brown's Pharmacy. MAILING THE STOPPER. A little advertising scheme that can be used to advantage among a limited number of families known to be good prospective purchasers of hot water bot- tles is something in the following line : THIS STOPPER WORTH 25 CENTS. This is a hot water bottle stopper. We have here at our store the bottle it fits. Bring in the stopper and let us show you the bottle. The bottle is a #1.75 grade, pure red gum, warranted for two years. If you bring in the stopper you can have one of these bot- tles for #1.50. Brown's Pharmacy. The novelty of such an advertisement will be sure 96 Getting More Drug Store Business to get it the desired attention, and the saving of 25 cents will appeal to any one in the market for a hot water bag. If you are afraid people will use the stoppers for old bottles instead of bringing them in, take off the washers before sending them out. A MAILING CARD. Here is a suggestion for an advertisement for a mailing card to be sent out to the store's mailing list: PAIN INSURANCE. Would you pay 3 cents a week to be insured against pain for the cold half of a year ? Did you know that a good hot water bottle properly used will stop ninety per cent of the pains you are called upon to bear? For 78 cents we will sell you a 2-quart hot water bottle guaranteed to last the next six months (it would probably last a good deal longer). This means 3 cents a week until warm weather comes again. This 3 cents a week is practically pain insurance. Isn't it worth the price? Let us send one of these good 78-cent bot- tles around to the house for examination. You need not buy unless you really want to. Brown's Pharmacy. A card listing all the many uses of the hot water bottle in stopping pain or in producing comfort or alleviating illness will make a good stimulator of business along this line. Such a card headed " Hot Water Bottle Uses," and ending, u Good hot water bottles from 78 cents up at Brown's Pharmacy," can be used for insertion with bills and statements, for slipping into parcels and for mailing out direct. 97 Getting More Drug Store Business A few of them should be kept scattered, right side up, on the show-cases throughout the store, where they will give the waiting customer something to read for a moment. These will serve as an excellent reminder to the man or woman who has intended to get a new hot water bottle, but who forgets it when down-town. If the druggist makes it a point so to adjust his advertising and so to display his stock that no one can come in without being reminded that hot water bottles are sold there, and that they have such and such uses, the increase in sales is bound to be remarkably satisfactory. People want and need the goods, and in no end of instances are holding off from buying them through sheer neglect or forget- fulness. Such work as I have mentioned will make new customers and it will remind old customers. It will stimulate the hot water bottle trade to an extent that will make it one of the most important factors of the fall business. 98 CHAPTER XIII Speeding Up Cigar Sales. Every drug store sells cigars. A druggist's cigar trade is usually in a direct ratio to the quality of his cigars, and the ones who sit around and complain that their cigar case is a worthless appendage are usually the ones who do not give their customers their money's worth in those goods. There is more competition in this line than in almost any other line the druggist carries. In the smaller places every grocery store and barber shop and hotel and restaurant is in the business and even in small villages there is usually at least one cigar store. In cities the newstands and chain cigar stores cut up the trade still further. But taking one town with another, there is oppor- tunity for most druggists to work up a good deal more cigar business than is usually obtained. The cigar department is apt to be forgotten when the advertising schedule is made up. All good druggists try to keep a line of goods that will appeal to their trade and occasionally they attempt to inter- est a new customer by giving away a cigar or two. That is commendable but it falls far short of the mark. It produces negligible results if any. With the average drug store, then, it simmers down to a case of taking care of what cigar trade comes along and calling it square. That certainly 99 Getting More Drug Store Business is not giving a very valuable branch of the business a fair show. As a matter of fact, cigars are more difficult to advertise than almost anything else in the drug store. Running a cigar ad in your regular news- paper space with about the same frequency you give to any other single line of stock will be of very little use. There must be special advertising gotten up for the express purpose of reaching the smoker. It must be made to reach him and to crowd itself upon his attention. The average man whose cigar trade you would like to get is a person who will not pay much attention to an ordinary advertisement. It must be extraordinary. In the first place, you must look well after the store part of your cigar business. f That means that you want the cigar case to be near the door in a good light and with a good lighter. Have an auto- matic clipper and keep the lighter clean, bright and always working perfectly. Be sure it is convenient of access X There is a vast difference in the way different druggists arrange the cigars in their cases. It all counts too. In the first place, have modern mois- teners in the showcase. Some swear by the hang- ing kind, but as they take up room and obstruct the view of the contents of the case, I think trays that fit into the bottom of the case are preferable. A modern type of cigar case humidor is the best thing. It is certainly important that the cigars be kept of just the right moisture. Smokers soon find out ioo Getting More Drug Store Business where the cigars are apt to be dry so they will crumble in the mouth, to say nothing of crumbling in the pocket of the purchaser. The druggist is usually "short" on knowledge of the character of the different sorts of tobacco. He treats them all alike and consequently spoils some of his cigars by having them too dry and others by having them too wet. The average low-priced domestic cigar needs to be kept only fairly moist — just enough so as to be agreeable to hold it in the mouth. It will not injure it to get a little dry so long as it is made right when put on sale. The imported Havanas will not be spoiled by keeping. Age will ordinarily improve them and they can be moistened up again when they get too dry. But good Porto Rico cigars are a very different proposition. And right here I would like to say that doubtless many of the dealers who have had poor success with these goods probably have their lack of knowledge of how to care for them to blame. The Porto Rican stock should be bought as green as you can get it. If the cigars have been dried out at all, don't take them. Keep these goods as green as you can. They are foil wrapped and will not dry in a cold or a moist place. A Porto Rico cigar that has been dry once will never be anything more than a bunch of hay afterwards. Keep such cigars wet until they go into the case. If they are so green that they will not burn let them stand open on the case for a day. It is a good IOI Getting More Drug Store Business fault. It is a scheme worth while anyway to keep a box of the cigars that you are pushing principally on top of the case where they will get especial attention. You can buy the Porto Rican goods at a price that will give you a nice margin to play on, if you know where to get them. Don't expect them to be pretty cigars, for they are apt to look rather rough, but they are the H pure quill " — nothing but tobacco in its unadulterated state. The smokers that like them will stick to them and will not go back to the "doped" goods, though they may switch off onto higher priced Havana cigars. .When you have your case properly moistened, put in the boxes in the way that will best show the goods, and show the box covers as well. There are patent fasteners that will make the back of a box stand up straight, but they are a needless expense. When you take the nail out of the box, drive it down through the cover just as it was before but at the back ; then open up the box carefully, and, presto ! the lid will stand at any angle. The boxes will take up much less room in this way than in the old bend- the-cover-back style. They look better, too. With the boxes properly arranged in the case, each one should be marked with the price and kind of cigars it contains. Use black cards with the inscription put on in white ink. This makes a far more attractive card than any other. The uniform- ity of the cards adds, too. Stand them upright in the front end of each box. They look best this way and are easily read. 102 Getting More Drug Store Business Always have plenty of good matches on the top of the case, and encourage your customers to take all they want. Matches are cheap. Don't be stingy with them. Offer a small box to every purchaser. Not many will take one, but it looks generous and is not really expensive^ Another thing that counts is to have plenty of the little cigar pockets, preferably the ones that come in long strips separating each cigar by itself so that the wrappers will not be broken by the cigars rub- bing against one another. When it comes to the actual advertising of cigars, there are various propositions open to the dealer ; the newspapers, the mailing list plans, odds and ends in the way of imprinted novelties, and some others. Some novelties as match safes and other pocket things which men like to carry are of little value as advertising. They get you some good *wifl, but that's all. The newspaper advertising must be quite extensive to be productive of much return, and at that rate will crowd out your other lines too much. If you can use a mailing list, that will prove the best result-bringer for the money invested. Below I give the copy for a few ads that can be utilized with very little change. The first two I had printed upon the large 7 by 11 inch postal cards. The first one depended for its point upon a letter which I think I copied from some paper. The entire ad was printed in single column, 12-point type down the middle of the back of the card. 103 Getting More Drug Store Business RATHER FUNNY. The following letter was received by a Quebec firm of bicycle manufacturers from one of their customers : Sherebrook, P. Q. mister T. J. Jones and companee, Notre Dame street Montreal, P. Q. Dear sir; — I receev de bicykel witch I by from you alrite but for why you dont send me no saddel, wat is de use of de bicykel when She dont have no saddel. i am lose to me my kustomer sure ting by no having de saddel and dats not very pleasure for Me. wat is de matter wit you mister jones and companee, is not my moneys so good like anoder mans you lose to me my trade and i am very anger for dat an now i tells to you dat you are a dam fools and no good mister jones and companee. i send to you back at once you bicykel tomorro for shure bekawse you are such a dam foolishness peopel. yours re- speckfullee, J. B. St. Dennis. P. S. since i rite this letter i find de saddel in de box. excuse to me. MISTER MAN; dere is only one place for cigars to buy in dis town. Did you it know dat places was mister jon smith his drug stores he have de good cigars more as all oder stores, dis card present by dose man who is name on oder side is for five cent cigar good. This card is good for a 5c cigar at Smith's. Get up the second card in the same way as the first and send it to the same persons. Here is the copy: 104 Getting More Drug Store Business QUEER SMOKES. In the Philippines the use of tobacco is universal. The native child acquires the tobacco habit as soon as it is able to walk. In the northern provinces especially it is no uncommon sight to see a child five or six years old puffing vigorously at a big cigar The women smoke fully as much as the men, and commonly smoke cigars where the men use cigarettes. In the northern part of Luzon immense cigars, often a couple of feet long and as thick as the wrist, are used. Such a cigar is suspended from a rafter of the house by a string and smoked during the day by all members of the family as desired. NO FAMILY SMOKES. We are out of the family size smokes just now. Perhaps you do not care for that sort anyway ? There is one thing certain : we have a line of cigars that will give you more good brands to choose from than any other stock that we know of. We have made a little study of cigar handling lately, and have found out a few new things worth knowing about taking care of the goods. As a result, our cigars are not only better stock, bought with more knowledge of the goods, but they are better cared for. We know just the right way to treat each particular sort of tobacco, and we appreciate the fact that tobacco is an article requiring more care than anything else, even in a drug store, if it is to be kept right. We invite your criticism of our cigar selling methods. If you do not find your favorite brand at our store, let us get it for you — provided we have not something here that you will like even better. Smith's Drug Store. A NOVEL ADVERTISEMENT. A simple little ad, easily gotton up and easily mailed, is a heavy white visiting card, sent out in 105 Getting More Drug Store Business an envelope to fit it, the card being printed in visit- ing card style : Smoke "Corn Silk," Smith's new 5c Cigar. Advertising matter mailed in this way to smokers will have an excellent chance of success in getting results for the reason that not much of this sort of advertising has been done. If the possibilities of the business warrant it, it would be wise to send out something new once a month. But whatever you do in the way of pushing your cigar business, remember that the more pains you take with your stock and with your cigar customers, the harder you try to please them, the better results you will get. Smokers are notoriously notional. Cater to their notions ! 106 CHAPTER XIV The Candy Case. Most drug stores carry a line of confectionery of some sort. In many cases it is a poorly arranged and ill-sustained stock, given less attention than almost any other department of the store. In such cases it is a losing investment. It not only fails to pay a profit of itself but it creates an unfavorable impression with customers who find themselves offered stale candy, soiled packages or low-grade goods. This condemnation does not apply to the drug- gist who is handling his candy trade in the right way. It applies to stores like one the writer visited the other day, where the candy stock was repre- sented by something under a dozen boxes, some of them left over from Christmas, as was obvious by Vthe holly wrappers, and all placed in the top of a little floor case near the door with atomizers and a few other sundries mixed in. v This store was at a corner where in cold weather many people step inside to wait for cars. It is safe to say that few of those people took occasion to make their candy purchases there. fA small stock of candy is not necessarily a dis- couraging feature with the customer. In fact, it is often the small stock that is the fresh stock. In the case of the above druggist, if he had cleaned out the case and taken out all the other goods, keeping his small supply of candy well assorted and 107 Getting More Drug Store Business fresh in appearance, people would not hesitate to buy there. I would have spent a dollar with him myself willingly. As it was I waited until I found a drug store where the conditions were more favor- able. The man with the small store and the little case might impress people favorably regarding his stock of candy by some such little scheme as the use of a neat show card, reading H We guarantee this stock fresh today/ ' and in one corner of the card he should stick each morning the new leaf from a daily memorandum calendar pad, thus bringing the card right up to date. The minute the show card begins to look as though it had not been made that day — away with it ! \ The drug store into which I wandered after pass- ing by the man who preferred sitting with his feet up on the stove and his hat on, while he argued with someone about the best horse in town, rather than fix up the candy case, was the entire antithesis of the first. Here candy was given a long show case, and though the stock was not large for the size of the case, there was a splendid variety. Care seemed to be taken to keep the variety up, though each kind was stocked in a small quantity in order to maintain a fresh stock. The packages were spread out to make a good showing, every brand and style having room, and the packages, as is often true in a large stock, were 108 Getting More Drug Store Business none of them shelf -worn in appearance. Where outside wrappers had become torn in handling they had evidently been removed. After making my purchase I heard the proprietor telephoning to a local jobber for a quarter dozen of a style of package I had asked for and was not in stock. Of course, it is possible for the drug store in a city where jobbers are located to keep up stock with much less trouble and expense than in a coun- try town, but the man who is really anxious to keep up a stock of fresh goods will do it if he's in the Klondike section. It is more the man than the opportunity, or lack of it. Many druggists find it profitable to handle the bulk candy. This is especially true in the smaller places. Personally, the writer found the bulk candy business unprofitable, and threw it out and gave up all the space to package goods. The bulk candy called for endless 5c sales, which brought no profit. It called for spending valuable time in sell- ing children candy at a loss, because they either wanted for a penny about five cents' worth of goods, or else they were sent away with the idea that the store was a stingy one — and no man who is in business to stay can afford to antagonize the little people. It called for down weight and further loss by breakage of pieces, stale goods, help-themselves customers and clerks, etc. The package idea is much the nicer way, the easier and the quicker, and people nowadays like it better. In order to make candy pay its way there should 109 Getting More Drug Store Business be a large volume of sales, and this requires some advertising all the while. Sporadic attempts to build up a trade will not amount to anything more than the cost of the publicity. Few druggists realize the possibilities of the candy trade. It is not like the trade in anything else the dealer sells, unless it may be cigars. It bears a resemblance to the cigar trade. A customer purchases a bottle of cough cure and it cures his cough, or at least he gets over it, and he needs no more. He buys an atomizer and it lasts him a year or two. He buys a pound box of candy and the next day he may be ready for an- other. More than that, if he was suited, he is ready for another of the same sort. The candy business can be developed on this account to an almost un- limited extent. The druggist should make up his mind when he begins pushing the line that he can afford to sell the first pound to a customer without profit. That is, he can afford to spend the profit on the first sale for advertising and depend upon the repeat sales to make his money. Many candy advertisers confine their advertise- ments to a simple statement that they carry a cer- tain line of goods. Hundreds of drug stores all over the country are advertising candy in a way that cannot prove profitable because it does not make the people want the goods. No matter how well known the line for which a store has the agency, there are plenty of people who do not know that no Getting More Drug Store Business line and are not interested in it. There are also plenty who do know about it, but who do not know that it is superior in any way. Furthermore, the very people whom the dealer wants to interest are those who do not know about the line he carries, and an advertisement that is a mere statement that such and such a line is carried assumes altogether too much. It will make no sales to new customers. It will only help a little, mighty little, on repeats. Candy advertising should describe certain pack- ages and their contents in such a way that it will make the reader's mouth water for the goods. Such advertising is not as hard to write as it might seem. One of the best ways to introduce any line of goods that is in the confectionery class is by sam- pling them. It is possible in this way to get the introductory package into the hands of a new cus- tomer very easily, and without much expense. One way is by giving away a good-sized package with a purchase of a certain amount. For instance, a box that costs you 25c may be given with a purchase amounting to a dollar. A special like this would make a big day's business if handled right, and it would introduce the candy to innumerable people who never tried it before. And if the goods were all right, there would be further sales that would pay for any possible loss on the first. If the goods were not all right, it would be very foolish to make any such proposition regarding them. The confectioner has the advantage of the drug- iii Getting More Drug Store Business gist in advertising the line, for he has no other line he must advertise. He can devote all his space to confectioner publicity, and it is important that candy have publicity. The druggist cannot afford to give up advertising his chief business for the sake of a side line, and yet this is a side line that can not sub- sist on half advertising rations. The best way is probably to give up a section of the regular space to candy advertising, or else to run a smaller separate ad. for that line. No line offers a better chance to make special offers without permanently disorganizing prices than the candy line. The variety of styles and makes of package goods is without limit, and a special sale can be run on one style without making any future trouble. The writer has found a confectionery journal of great value in keeping in touch with what is new in that line of goods, and has in that way got in touch with some great successes. Of course this is true in any line. The man who tries to run a store without trade journals to help him steer his way and post him on the outside news of the trade will fall far short of the success he otherwise might gain. Window displays are valuable helps in making the candy go. A display that shows opened packages, letting the public get their eyes upon the candy itself, will make sales as a direct result. There is no line of goods that sells on sight as readily as goods that are to be eaten. Such goods 112 Getting More Drug Store Business will sell themselves to a great extent if they are given a chance. But no goods can be depended upon to build up a big individual business of their own without something beside mere display. As much of the candy display as possible should bear plain price cards and names of variety, and when feasible there should be opened boxes show- ing what the goods are like. Novelties are desir- able and help much in attracting attention. There are always seasonable novelties that sell for Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving or other holiday occasion. A few of these to make the stock look up to date are desirable, but any kind of package that shows that it is old after a certain day has passed should be handled in small quantities and disposed of early. Novelties sell best in low-priced goods. The people who buy the expensive boxes usually want standard styles of package. Get hold of plenty of novelties and don't try to run any of them too long. When the sales on a novelty begin to wane, get rid of it and put some- thing new in its place. There are many novelties that will sell quickly to the extent of a few cartons and then stop dead. Take on novelty candy for its novelty value, but don't count on its sale being continuous. The candy trade of a school is always business of considerable importance and volume. It is not necessary to carry the penny lines demanded by the smallest children unless you have plenty of space and help, but in the next class, the nickel and "3 Getting More Drug Store Business dime lines and better, you can well afford to feature a large variety of goods with constantly changing variety, especially in milk chocolates, fruit tablets, chocolate bars and chewing gum. Whatever the success of the candy business, the line will be found not to interfere with other lines in the store, and it will work in well with the soda- water trade, and bring in many people who will make other and profitable purchases, though the candy they buy may be sold very close. 114 CHAPTER XV Selling More Soap When I was in the drug business soap didn't look good to me. It wasn't that I didn't have plenty of it, nor that I didn't use enough. I had a show-case full and about once a month I would take home a number of damaged, aged, chipped or broken cakes. But I couldn't sell enough soap to buy a thrift stamp on the monthly payment basis. The grocers and the mail-order houses had me going on soap. I just kept it. One day, after I had just turned down a sales- man, I sat looking at the soap show-case, contem- plating, I have to admit, closing out the entire line and putting in dill pickles or shoe-laces or some- thing profitable, A thought the salesman had left kept cropping up in my mind, however. He had remarked several times, "Folks haven't begun to buy medicated soaps yet." They hadn't begun, and it didn't look as if they were going to begin, as far as I was concerned. But now that I thought the matter over I saw another side to it. That other side was that there was a chance that folks would begin, or that they could be made to begin ; and, knowing as I did the value of medicated soaps, I wondered why I couldn't make them begin. I went to the telephone and called up the Ameri- 115 Getting More Drug Store Business can house and asked if my soap salesman had left town yet. He was just getting into the depot omnibus. " Call him back ! " I said, " and send him down to my store." The outcome was a good-sized order for soap — medicated soap. Of course I already had medicated soap ; I had the usual assortment of boxes of a quarter-dozen each of half a dozen different kinds of the best known varieties. My whole stock piled on the floor wouldn't have tripped up a one-legged blind man, though. I bought enough so I could be really considered in the business. While I was waiting for the goods to come I studied the soap game a little and I cleared out my soap show-case. I put all the soap in the window, except some perfectly good and staple kinds, and I put prices on the goods that moved them right in the face of competition and soap clubs. Then, when the new soap came, I was ready for it. I had my stock down to staples. I put no per- fumed toilet soaps back into the show-case, but found a place elsewhere. I was going to use that particular case for goods on which I was not up against the competition of free premiums, mail- order catalogues, and juvenile peddlers, /f Into that case (and, I forgot to say, I moved the case nearly to the front of the store) I put a nice little display of each kind of medicated soap I bought. I didn't just set in one box of a kind and pack them in as closely together as they would go. 116 Getting More Drug Store Business I took several boxes of a kind — what I had of most kinds — and made unit displays of them. For example, in the bottom was a display of an antisep- tic soap on which I put a card that gave the following information : " Blank's Antiseptic Soap, destroys perspiration odors ; prevents infection ; stops itch- ing; sterilizes garments and utensils: kills germs; harmless ; 25c. cake." On one side of this I placed a pile of Castile soap and I used this card : u Pure Castile. We defy competition on this soap. You can't get as pure a soap anywhere for less money, 10c. and 15c. Mail- order or soap-club cakes weigh less, are not as pure." On the other side I arranged a pile of guest-room soaps. You see this case was mainly medicated soaps, but the medicated idea was not what I was going to emphasize. I called this a case of specialty soaps, and above it I hung a big card : u Specialty Soaps — Get the right soap for each purpose and save money. " If I had said "medicated soaps," most people would have turned away from the sign, thinking st I don't need any medicine soap." My idea was to interest people in choosing a special soap for a special purpose, knowing that they would get better results, better satisfaction, and that I would place myself outside of the com- petition I couldn't meet easily* I arranged displays of carbolic soap, bichloride soap, borated soap, tar soap, and others. A display of shaving soap bore the following card : " A sixth 117 Getting More Drug Store Business of a cent per shave. Makes shaving easy, satisfac- tory and cheap/ ' I showed the shaving soap in cakes, tubes and sticks. Tooth soap bore this inscription : u Tastes good. Gives a pleasant breath. Easiest to use. No waste." Tar soap was carded : "Keep your hair beautiful and keep it growing. Tar soap beats fake tonics/' For the shampoo soap in bottles, I said : " A shampoo a week will make your hair sleek. " By using these informative cards I interested people. When a customer stopped in front of this case I noticed at once that he or she read not only one card, but all of them, following them along and getting the information I had put out there. Most people don't know anything about medi- cated soaps except that they have seen some of them recommended for pimples or something like that. Here were " specialty soaps," a comparatively new idea. A soap for every need, to say nothing of a need for every soap. Take the baby soap that I featured, for instance ; a perfectly pure olive oil soap. I said, " Be careful what soap you use for baby ! Treat your own skin to impurities if you like, but take care of the baby. This soap is spec- ially for babies. It keeps them smiling." I transferred this whole display into the window at one time and gave the public a " specialty soap " window to look at. They took an interest in it, too. It was one of the best selling windows I ever put in. Then I started in my regular newspaper space a 118 Getting More Drug Store Business series of soap advertisements and I featured them as " soap secrets," numbering them serially — i, 2, 3, etc. These appeared daily while the window dis- play was on exhibition. As each advertisement was run, I had the printers take the advertisement out and run off a supply of parcel slips from it before destroying the ad. I suppose you'd call this all a soap experiment, but it turned out to be a regular business proposi- tion and it developed a sale for a line I hadn't been selling at all — or so nearly not at all as to be insig- nificant in results. I believe the public in any town will respond to just such treatment as this, and that any druggist can do what I did with " specialty " soaps. 119 CHAPTER XVI Who Will Sell the Sundries? Who is going to sell all the druggists 1 sundries that will be bought in your vicinity this year ? Will most of them be bought from you and your local competitors, or will they come from mail order houses ? Are you going to go after this business and make every effort to get your share of it, or are you going to sit back and complain that people buy from the mail order houses just out of pure cussedness and that there is no use trying to make them see the advantages of buying at home ? I have heard drug- gists, before now, proclaim that the local public has no appreciation of what the home business men do for the community, that they expect you to support the town and its institutions with your money while they send their money away for such goods as you sell. It is perfect foolishness to claim that people buy by mail just to be mean and contrary. It is a waste of time to kick about catalogue competition and to tell people they must buy from you because you are a local merchant and a taxpayer in the old home town. Whatever people ought to do, according to your idea of rights, they will persist in doing as they please. Whether people ought to buy at home or not is beside the question. The fact is that they will buy where they want to buy — where they think they 120 Getting More Drug Store Business can buy to the best advantage. That is human nature. Do you and your own family never send out of town for anything, thinking to buy cheaper or to get something you like better than what the home merchants offer you ? I don't suppose there ever was a merchant who always did all his retail buying right in his own town — in spite of all he has to say about buying at home. It does not much matter what the ethics of the situation are. The public will be likely to buy mainly from the men who ask most persistently and efficiently for their business. The local drug- gist or the catalogue house that goes after the trade and keeps going will get it in the end. The mail order people are after the business in sundries and toilet goods and many kinds of medi- cines in your territory. They are mailing their cat- alogues into your town and if you are asleep on this proposition, you may be sure they are working while you sleep. When you finally wake up to the fact that you are losing most of your trade to out of town concerns, you may find it too late to offset effectually the well planned campaigns of those cat- alogue concerns who have never let up in their efforts. It is old advice to fight fire with fire, but the man who first gave that advice did not have in mind fighting a prairie fire with a tallow candle. Get your backfire advertising under way early and make it important enough to amount to something. Unless you are right after the business all the time, many of your best customers will be ordering 121 Getting More Drug Store Business sundries and other drug store goods out of town just because you are not advertisidg the line. If you do not keep up a stiff advertising all the while, if you wait to advertise seasonable or new goods after the demand for them begins, you will miss the best business on those goods. The time to advertise any line is before people are ready to buy and use the goods. You want your advertising to help people to decide what to buy and where to buy it. It is not effective adver- tising merely to run the kind of announcement that serves to tell people where they can get a certain article they have considered and decided to buy. Get your advertising under way ahead of the demand and bring in the early business. The first business is the best business and it brings the later business along after it. The only way in which the mail order house offers the buyer of your kinds of goods any advantage is possibly in the matter of price. Even if it does not sell cheaper, it often makes people believe it does, because it tells the people its price is low and it quotes prices on everything. You have all the other advantages, even if your price is a little higher. You make immediate delivery without delay. There are no transportation charges to be added in buying from you. There are no claims against the trans- portation company, no adjustments to be made by mail, no orders to be written out, no buying "unsight and unseen," no chances of loss by break- age. You put the goods right into the customers' 122 Getting More Drug Store Business hands in good order. The catalogue house cannot match such service. The service you give is worth money and people are willing to pay additional for it, but you have to sell them with your advertising. Advertising will enable you to overcome differ- ences in price by making all your advantages obvi- ous. You can show how it is better to buy from you because you offer service. You know there are other things than first cost to be considered in buying. Many people forget this and your adver- tising ought to recall it to them. Advertising qual- ity and durability and high grade utility helps to offset the little price advantages the catalogue may offer. Bear on hard on the advantage of buying drug store goods from a druggist of known reputa- tion who is right on the ground with his personal guarantee. Emphasize the advantage of seeing the goods before accepting them, and the disadvantages of buying from picture. You only irritate your public when you advertise along this line : Buy at Home! Who supports local institutions? The home merchant. Who pays the taxes that keep up schools and public utilities ? The home merchant. Why send your money to catalogue houses for cheap goods when you can get good goods from us? Why not be patriotic and buy at home? Etc., etc., etc. Advertise what you have to sell in goods and service and advertise it well. Don't waste your advertising space telling people what they ought to do — preaching at them. Make them see the advan- 123 Getting More Drug Store Business tages of buying from you and they will give you their business. Tell them what they ought to do and what they ought not to do and they will resent your free advice and take the position that they are independent and can buy where they please. Here is a better type of advertisement to use : Drug Store Economy. There is a good deal to be saved in careful shopping for your drug store wants. When you want to get the best value for the least money, you will find it worth while to come to us and let us show you what quality to buy. In many kinds of drug store goods several grades are available, and we can sell to you as cheaply as any concern, but we do not advise buying the cheapest goods in most cases. The lowest priced hot water bottle, for instance, may prove to be the most expensive in the end, if it leaks and damages bedding and garments, or if it has to be replaced in a little while with another. In medicines and toilet specialties, there is no economy in cheap goods. You save a little money, perhaps, but you get what is of no real value, and in order to get results it is necessary to buy the better grade in the end. Even where the goods are of standard make, the cheaper price may cover old and deteriorated goods or it may involve inconvenience or delay in purchase with added cost in some other form, as in transportation charges. Everything considered, we do not believe you can save as much money buying anywhere else as in buying from us. Give us a chance to prove what we say. Greene's Pharmacy. Ask the manufacturers of the lines you sell to supply you with advertising matter, folders, book- 124 Getting More Drug Store Business lets, show cards, window displays, mailing cards. You can use such helps with little or no expense, and they produce results and help your store to profit by the national advertising of the standard brands. Keep people thinking about your store in connec- tion with advertised lines and you will get more of the business on those goods. Cease to advertise that you have those goods and people will buy wherever it happens. The mail order house is after the business on druggists' sundries and on all the other lines you handle. If there was enough prescription business to make it worth while, you would probably find them competing for that. The fact that all the advantages in selling goods to the home public lie with you, unless perhaps the price, counts for you, but it will not bring you the business unless you go after it with advertising. Business in any line goes to the people who go after it, whether they are local merchants or mail order houses. It is up to you whether you get the business in your line this year or not. 125 CHAPTER XVII Making Disinectants Sell Every drug store sells more or less disinfectants. Usually more than it should expect to sell, consider- ing the amount of pushing the line gets ; and less than it could sell if the proper attention were given it. Few lines pay a better profit than disinfectants, taken as a whole. Much of the stock is bulk goods, and can be sold at a large advance over cost, and even the proprietary disinfectants are seldom sold at cut rates. The disinfectant business is one that is susceptible of great development. People are becoming better educated in the necessity for the use of such things, but the demand may be stimulated immensely yet. Most families buy disinfectants only when the need for them is obvious. The druggist can, if he will, educate many people to buy the goods as preventives as well as cures. The hot weather of July and August brings about a greater sale for disinfectants than there is in the colder months, and the cumulative effect of the germ breeding conditions makes the latter part of August about the most seasonable period for such goods. Disinfectants as a rule afford the druggist a good profit and are very generally used, making them good subjects for advertising in season. Of course in advertising them the desirable thing is to create 126 Getting More Drug Store Business the greatest demand for those articles which pay best. The disinfectants for which the demand is the largest are copperas, chloride of lime, Piatt's chlo- rides, carbolic acid, mercuric chloride, etc. There is a good deal of difference in the cost of these things, as they are bought in quantity or in lessqr amounts as wanted. It pays to look up the stock as the hot weather advances and buy enough to get the quantity price where there is an advantage of that sort obtainable — and there is one in most cases. The time to lay in a stock in any seasonable goods is just before the seasons opens, not after it is under way. [Such of these disinfectants as do not come already ill packages ought to be prepared in cartons or bottles of a good selling size and labeled with the drug label, telling how the goods are to be used and giving any precautions necessary in their use.} It should be made a particular point to give as many and varied uses as possible, not only for the cure of bad conditions, but also for their prevention. The more ways that people can be induced to use an article, the more purposes for which it is availa- ble, the more of it they will use and the oftener they will have to buy. There are many articles in a drug store besides the disinfectants that could be made to sell to a much greater extent if people were educated up to their uses. A campaign of education is a good thing to create demand. 127 Getting More Drug Store Business In the way of proprietary disinfectants and germi- cides the houses putting up the goods are ready with generous supplies of literature which they are anxious to get properly distributed. They will furnish abundant printed matter, with the dealer's name, if he will agree to place it where it will do the most good. It will pay the dealer to take hold of this and help distribute the literature. By taking advantage of such opportunities to secure free advertising matter, and by distributing it carefully the dealer can do much to help make his store the headquarters for disinfectants, fumigators and various other disease preventives. The druggist ought to familiarize himself with the nature of the spread of contagious and infectious diseases so that when any disease of the sort, if it is nothing more than " grip," becomes in any degree epidemic he will be able to recommend the right pre- cautions to customers who want to know what to do, and to advertise these recommendations in a way to make people feel the need of following them. Among the diseases that the druggist should watch are diphtheria, typhoid, measles, small-pox, meningi- tis, scarlet fever, consumption, whooping cough, etc. People are always ready to do anything in reason to prevent these diseases from getting into the family, and he who goes to them with reliable information as to how their spread may be prevented will find that his knowledge will bring him good business. One of the best means of advertising disease pre- ventives is by means of a little booklet containing 128 Getting More Drug Store Business information regarding each of the diseases mentioned, as well as about general disinfectant precautions and the danger of the spread of common colds. This booklet may well be sent to all the families on the druggist's mailing list with a request that they keep it for reference. And when any of the diseases mentioned becomes prevalent the newspaper adver- tising should call attention to the booklets, advising people to get them out and study the contents, and telling the public that more booklets are on hand for any who have lost them, or did not get them before. In the case of an epidemic, window bulletins ought to be made telling people what they should buy and use, and these bulletins kept on display for weeks, attention being called to them in the newspaper advertising. A little effort in the direction of cooperation with the board of health, showing them that you know what you are about and are qualified to give the right kind of advice, will often result in the health officer who inspects a family making his own task easier by simply telling them that if they will go to Blank, the Druggist, and tell him what they want to prevent, he will give them the right kind of preventives. This kind of work raises the druggist in the appre- ciation of the public and gives them a better opinion of his professional ability. It also stamps him as being public-spirited and interested in anything that is for the benefit of the people. It is well to push some one preparation that is suited to about all disinfecting uses and mention 129 Getting More Drug Store Business this in all advertising in order to make it familiar to people. A scattering mention of a dozen different preparations in all advertising confuses people and fails to produce the same results that concentration gives. This article ought to be offered and described upon demands for any of the proprietary disinfectants and it should be given almost continuously insine the store display and frequent window exhibits. It should be a good profit producer and one that can profitably be recommended in preference to such things as chloride of lime and copperas in order to make a sale of a " quarter " package instead of five cents' worth of something. The physicians should be well advertised along this line and their cooperation sought industriously. Tney can influence all their patients to buy the kind of disinfectant they think is right and they should be shown absolutely wherein your kind is perfectly reliable. Letters sent every month to the doctors, each one hammering in one point effectively, will help very much. The doctor is a busy man and apt to throw advertising into the waste basket, but every ingenu- ity you possess must be exercised to get up letters that will be read. Good business in disinfectants is that of public boards of one kind or another which have control of bublic buildings. Large manufacturing concerns, or small ones, should be solicited. You should be pre- pared to make them attractive prices on large pack- 130 Getting More Drug Store Business ages, and you should go after the business in person instead of waiting for them to respond to general publicity methods. It is worth quite a little indi- vidual effort to get such users started on a line of goods, for they do not change easily, finding it easier to send repeat orders than to investigate new kinds of goods. Much of the advertising sent out on disinfectants is unattractive. It is filled with details that are of little importance, giving a volume to the folder or booklet that renders it very likely to get read. It contains testimonial after testimonial in fine type. It obscures the main facts by hiding them in a mass of unnecessary matter. The druggist ought to begin to advertise disin- fectants when the hot weather sets in and sprinkle his newspaper ads on that subject through all of July, August and September. There is quite an advantage in advertising any sort of goods in the drug line early and bearing hard on the preventive idea. If a man can be induced to buy copperas before he needs it, so that he will use it as a preventive, he will probably keep coming back for more all the season at the same place where he bought first. After being taught to use it to prevent foul condi- tions, he can be easily shown that its continued use is needed to continue to prevent those conditions. That sort of use will make up for the difference in quantity between the amount necessary to prevent and the amount necessary to cure the unsanitary Getting More Drug Store Business condition of things. Every one recognizes the fact that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but it is human nature to put things off till the last day, in the afternoon. Probably the best way to promote the sale of dis- infectants is to issue early a folder telling of the dangers of unsanitary arrangements and suggesting the need for protection against the hidden disease germs that menace the health of the people, who are inclined to be careless about such matters. The folder should be used freely, mailed to every one within reach and enclosed in all packages leav- ing the store. A good size is such as will slip into a No. 6% envelope, A good title for the first page is " Hot Weather Precautions/' The title is sufficient for the first page of such an ad. Inside on the first page, under the heading of « Lurking Dangers/' one can tell of the dangers of non-disinfection in brief and impressive language, but without being repulsive. People are naturally a little morbid at the best and are always looking for something that says there is danger at hand. This should not be an attempt to scare the public into buying disinfectants, but an effort to make them see that the danger is not imaginary, and though real and right at hand in nearly every home, can be prevented in the easiest possible way and at the expense of probably only a few cents. The little article can close with a statement of the 132 Gettino More Drug Store Business certainty which surrounds modern disinfection. Page 3 should take up the disinfectants that the druggist carries, giving name, price and description (in a few words), each one so that even a child could be sent to the store for some without a misunder- standing arising about the cost or the identity of the thing wanted. The price and item page can be headed, " Cost of Safety/' The last page should contain the name of the store and its location at the foot of the page, and above a catchy headed little ad for some special disinfectant preparation that the druggist himself prepares under his own label. Window displays of disinfectants are easily arranged, and disinfectants will not be spoiled by the light or by insects. Plenty of cards ought to be used to indicate the different articles and their prices. Herewith is the matter for some good newspaper ads for disinfectants : ODORLESS DISINFECTANTS Many people neglect the use of disinfectants because they give out such a disagreeable odor which penetrates to all parts of the house. Don't risk health for that cause. It is all unnecessary. Odorless disinfectants aie just as powerful as the others. Don't take any chances with your family's health anyway. Think what you are risking ! ! As a splendid disinfectant for use in the house, where it is desired to avoid any indication of its presence, use Platt's Chlorides. 133 Getting More Drug Store Business This preparation has no odor and does not stain fabrics. It can be sprinkled about promiscuously or left standing in open vessels to absorb impurities from the air. For use in the sick room it is unequaled. No household can afford to be without it. We keep it in a concentrated form, and a bottle large enough to make two gallons of a strong solution costs but 50c. If you want bulk disinfectants for use in a large way try copperas, 5c. lb., 25 lbs for 75c. We have all the standard articles in this line, Carbolic Acid, Kreso, Creolin, Bichloride, etc. Telephone right away if you are in a hurry for anything. GOOD DISINFECTING There are places in every house and yard that need the application of disinfectants from time to time in hot weather. You can't afford to neglect this matter. The health of the family is at stake. No one need leave the premises in unsanitary condition for a single day on account of the expense. Disinfectants cost but little, either in actual price or in value, as compared with their preventive power. We sell the best grade of copperas for use in sewers, sinks, drain pipes, etc., for 5c. per lb. If you want a supply on hand for occasional use every week, let us send up a 10 lb. box for 35c. Copperas is easy to use. Simply put a lot into a pail of water or into a common garden sprinkler and pour it where you want it to go. The copperas itself can be put right into a drain or similar place without the trouble of dissolving it if water will reach it where it lies. All other disinfectants at prices as low in proportion as copperas. 134 CHAPTER XVIII Making the Soda Fountain Successful Folks are fussy about their soda fountain service and at the prices we have to ask for that service nowadays, they have a right to expect high class service. The druggist who neglects his fountain is going to find his fountain negleeted by the public. Success with soda water demands attention to the smaller details as well as to the more important essentials. There are many little things about operating a fountain that the druggist does not think can make a great deal of difference to people, but the people themselves think differently. If it is fussiness or crankiness or a fastidious taste that causes a cus- tomer to resent being served an ice cream drink with the handle of the spoon wet and sticky, then call it that, but see that thereafter the spoon the customer is to use is the last thing put into the glass, and that it is put in with a dry, clean handle. You do not serve finger bowls with your drinks and you know how a drop of syrup on two fingers will stick and be unpleasant until cleaned off. You don't want your customers to leave the fountain trying to lick their fingers clean ! And there is something else about spoons, too. Sometimes one discovers a druggist with an assort- ment of soda spoons that look as if they were right from the junk pile. They are minus most of their plating. They are short handled, long handled and 135 Getting More Drug Store Business middle size handled. They are bent and twisted. They are everything that spoons need not be, because it would not eost much to have them plated and the straightening would be a matter of a few minutes work with a pair of pliers. And those that are too short could be eliminated. Just make up your mind that the customer is going to notice the spoon. You may hand it out without even looking at it, but the customer has to eat with it and cannot help noticing anything that is wrong with it. Spend a few dollars for spoons if your spoon service is not all it should be, unless you can make it right without expense. Sometimes all that is needed is a little elbow grease to polish up the spoons already on hand. I mentioned the objection to a wet spoon ; what about the glass that is wet on the outside or served in a holder with a wet handle ? Your customers do not want to get their hands wet or sticky, so see to it that you give them no cause for complaint in that direction. A woman may spoil a pair of gloves try- ing to drink from a slopped over, mussy container. And just the person whose trade you want may be driven from your store by an improperly served •drink. Take the matter of straws. It is supposed to be a perfectly sanitary proposition to keep the straws in a nickel or glass holder on the bar. The top keeps out the flies and dust in theory and you may believe that if you never look into the bottom of the container when it is about empty. But anyway when anyone takes a straw out of the bunch, the 136 Getting More Dgug Store Business fingers paw over the top of more or less other straws, the end the customers put in their mouths. There are holders from which the straw is taken by its middle. There are straws that come in sealed paper containers, two in a package. You will do as you like about this straw business, but if you are cater- ing to a fastidious class of patrons, you will make no mistake in giving them straws they know have not been handled. Everyone knows that the soda bar ought to be clean and dry, but not every soda dispenser seems to realize the unpleasantness of having the bar wiped off under your nose with a dirty cloth when you are drinking. Don't wipe around a customer's glass and never switch an old cloth or sponge over the bar before patrons if you want them to feel happy. Another thing, and this is sometimes difficult to handle satisfactorily. The customer sitting in front of the soda bar often finds his eyes looking right at the sloppiest part of the outfit if such is the arrange- ment. And how can one feel pleased to sit there and drink with the eyes on a pile of dirty dishes, a sink full of muddy looking water, a boy washing glasses and spoons in that water, a floor strewn with used paper napkins, and many other unpleasant and unsightly features. Of course all this may be sani- tary and as clean as can be, but it looks the reverse and it is all calculated to detract from the enjoyment of the customer. Unfortunately, many fountains have from the outside of the bar a visible portion that is really dirty. 137 Getting More Drug Store Business If your arrangement is such that the outfit looks sightly from in front, don't use a little section of end bar that lets customers stand where they can look behind the scenes. Keep the actually working part of the dirty end of the job just as much out of sight as possible. It is not enough that the draining board and all those under parts are clean. They cannot but be mussy part of the time and they are never attractive in appearance. Soda fountain success is all tied up with the looks of the fountain and all of its accessories. People's tastes and appetites are more influenced by what they see than they themselves realize. What is the mirror back of the fountain for but to attract people by its looks, by making the appear- ance of the place more attractive — and what do many druggists do but pile up displays in front of the mirror and letter it all over with signs and even cover it in summer with mosquito netting because it is easier to do that than to wash the glass frequently ? A mirror behind the fountain is a real help toward the success of the soda business if it is given a chance to serve as a mirror instead of a signboard. Everything about the fountain ought to be as bright and clean and shiny as it can be made, and the work on it should be done before business begins in the morning That may be pretty early in hot weather, but see that somebody gets around early enough, even if they are given time off at the other end of the day to make up for it. No matter how clean and attractive your fountain 138 Getting More Drug Store Business may be, you cannot sell the goods if you don't have them. That means that it is going to prove fatal to success to allow yourself to be out of various staple flavors at times. Getting out of the things you know will be wanted steadily all the time is due to carelessness. There is no excuse for not watching the stock so as to avoid running low on such things as chocolate in some form, or on vanilla or straw- berry or other standard flavors, or on ice cream. You may think you cannot foresee what the weather will be and just what the demand is going to be, but you can come so close to it that you will very rarely have to admit that you are out of anything — if you will make it your care to think of this and look ahead and even study the weather predictions. If you take pains to do the little things that add to your patrons' comfort, you will encourage them to come to your fountain habitually. If you offer them paper napkins when there is a chance of their wanting them ; if you hand the smoker a couple of matches as he leaves the fountain, getting out a cigar or cigarette as he starts ; if you set out a glass of plain water habitually along with an ice cream dish ; if you avoid acting rushed and hurried and disinclined to take time to let the uncertain customer discuss the different flavors, etc., all these things will help make contented patrons who will like to patronize you. If you insist upon customers buying checks from the cashier before being served, try to make it easy for them to understand this and see that the clerks 139 Getting More Drug Store Business are not snappy with people who come up and ask for drinks before getting their checks. Different stores handle this matter in different ways, making it hard for a stranger to know just what to do where there are no signs to indicate. Get the cash in the way that seems best to you, but see that no customer is treated with any lack of courtesy. Don't permit a soda clerk to meet a request for a soda with a curt, " Get a check." Better than obliging customers to secure their check in advance, it always seems to me, is the plan of giving them a check when serving them. A soda fountain cannot be operated with success unless the ice cream end of the proposition is well handled. The ice cream is the main factor today in fountain success. Don't skimp on the cost of this product in order to make more money. Sell the best ice cream you can handle at a profit. Take the best care of it you can. Don't re-freeze icicles into it. Better waste half a freezer than to sell it in poor condition. And don't re-freeze it repeatedly and take a chance of poisoning your patrons. One cus- tomer made sick might cost you your whole business for a season. I knew of a druggist who lost his season's business because he did not watch his car- bonating tanks and in one of them the lining wore through. Patrons once bit are always shy. Don't allow the serving of mushy ice cream . When it begins to soften, get somebody on the job icing it up. If you can't depend on the clerks to watch the ice, do it yourself. Look at it often. 140 Getting More Drug Store Business The lack of ice at a soda fountain is fatal to the success of the business. Everything must be cold, cold syrups, cold carbonated water, cold milk, cold plain water, cold glasses. To save a dollar a week on ice might mean to lose fifty dollars worth of busi- ness. If the ice man is a little uncertain, figure ahead on your ice. Have a box for an extra cake or two. Ice is the most important part of your stock in hot weather. The appearance of the soda clerk has a lot to do with securing a desirable business of the best class. Some clerks seem to get themselves mussed up and sloppy from head to foot before they have been at the fountain an hour. Others keep pretty neat all day. Well, whatever it costs for clean jackets, see that they always wear them. If you cannot afford to keep your dispensers in clean jackets, increase your prices enough to pay the extra laundry bill and the results will justify the cost. You cannot make a success of the fountain with untidy attendants. A good soda fountain and good products of that fountain, will have a strong appeal to the school children, especially if you have enough room to use tables where the boys and girls can take a little time and be comfortable. A mere soda bar where people must stand and drink will not make a great appeal to those patrons. The girls in particular want to sit down and visit, and people will spend more money and buy the more expensive things on the menu if they can take their time to it. You can get tables and chairs and stools of such patterns as to give a 141 Getting More Drug Store Business maximum of accommodation in a minimum of space. The students like a bright, attractive place. You cannot expect to develop their trade with a dark, semi-gloomy, cheerless outfit. Have lots of light, night or day, cheerful attendants and clerks, and if possible, use phonograph or other music during the after-school time when the students make it their habit to come around. You will find that the hours of the greatest school trade will not be the hours when other trade is the heaviest. On that account you can give the school trade better service and more special attention. See that your store is comfortable, warm enough in winter and cool enough in summer. A chilly, dismal store is no place to develop the sale of eats of the ice cream type. A chilly atmosphere deadens the spirits of the patrons of any shop. Make them physically comfortable and mentally cheerful and they will spend their money a great deal faster. If you use a phonograph, pick out the lively band or orchestra pieces. Give your patrons something that will set them beating time with their toes. That is the kind of music to help youngsters to spend their money. Omit the grand opera selec- tions and the vaudeville and monolog numbers. Make the children, especially the high school boys and girls, feel at home in your store, but see that they observe the proprieties. Don't let them get rough and don't countenance any undue familiarities between the boys and girls. Maintain a high class 142 Getting More Drug Store Business reputation so parents will be willing to have their children come there. Employ no clerks who will fail of courtesy or respect to the girls, even when the girls themselves are of the forward kind, inclined to hang around and flirt. Allow no profanity on the part of help or patrons and don't allow boys to loaf there and make them- selves a nuisance. There is a difference between the idle, loafing sort and the schoolboy with a little spare time on his hands. Give the school trade as generous portions as you can. It is worth something to have a reputation for being generous. Take pains with the wants of the little folks who are too new at ordering to be able to speak right up for themselves. These littlest customers soon get older and then they know where they have been treated well. It will pay you to capitalize the school spirit, decorating a little with the school colors on the return after vacation time, or in the event of some school festival or athletic celebration. Get up fountain specials which you name after the school's athletic captains or winners. Put up pictures of the school football and baseball teams on occasion, keeping up a frequent change in such decorations. It will not be a bad idea to have a school bulletin board on which the students can post notices of meetings, advertisements of games, etc. Anything you do in such ways to affiliate yourself with the school interest helps to make your store the school drug store, the one the students favor and 143 Getting More Drug Store Business patronize most largely. Giving window or interior space to the display of school publicity is a very different thing from letting some theatrical com- pany use your display space in a way that brings no return to you. soda straws Act as if you considered it a privilege to make over a drink when the patron does not appear to like it. The soda clerk who looks out of the window while taking the patron's order does not make any hit with the trade. A soda clerk standing outside in the doorway is a living advertisement of the fact that you are having no business. If you have the idea that any cheap boy can sling soda water well enough, you have something yet to learn about the business. The soda fountain calls for the best kind of help. Don't let the customer catch you putting back in the box the cracker the customer left on the counter. It doesn't add a cent to the cost of operating the fountain to pass out plenty of hearty " Thank •you's." Employ soda clerks with enough backbone to stand and not lean on the back bar. Snatch up the dirty dishes the minute they are left. Nobody wants to sit down in front of them. Disorder on the back bar may not be accompanied by dirt, but pretty nearly every woman will asso- ciate the two. 144 Getting More Drug Store Business Don't move a finger to advertize or to boost your fountain until you know you are drawing good soda and selling good ice cream. When you spill too much of something into a drink, make that drink over again. It will be cheaper than to displease a patron. Handling a clean glass or cup by the rim, or a spoon by the wrong end is going to be noticed by some fastidious person who will try another fountain next time. Study the individual tastes of individuals if you want to get them into the habit of patronizing your fountain. Just because a visitor wants a drink of plain water without spending any money, don't act as if you were being robbed. Don't go off and leave patrons at the bar, even after serving them. Stay where you can anticipate any further wants and accept further orders. Don't be afraid to treat a customer to a drink now and then. A dime saved in that way looks as big as a dollar to some folks. The white jacket of the soda dispenser looks about a hundred per cent better when neatly and snugly buttoned than when open and flying loosely. Pay strict attention to the customer you are serv- ing, no matter what friend is trying to talk to you at the same time. Business before pleasure. Ask your friends to tell you of the defects in the service and flavors at your fountain. Don't depend 145 Getting More Drug Store Business on your own personal taste. It may not match that of the average patron. Don't monkey with cheap fruit juices and crushed fruits unless you are after the cheap class of trade. The success of your fountain business depends upon your success in pleasing your patrons, so take endless pains to satisfy the tastes of the fastidious, the peculiar and the whimsical. 146 CHAPTER XIX Helping the Christmas Sales Trade comes easier during the holiday season and for that reason many merchants do not increase their efforts in proportion to the possible increase in business. But there is no time when extra effort will produce as large returns as at this time, and because business would be good anyway is no reason for not doing everything possible to make it better yet. Do all you can to make conditions in your store favorable, to make people feel like buying. You may do a good business without going much out of your way to get it at this season, but you do it in spite of the conditions rather than on account of them. To begin with, have your store comfortable Keep it warm enough and not too hot. Have a place where people can go and get warm when they come in on a very cold day. This is especially important where the farming trade is a big factor. A store with a big hot air register or a good stove will be favored by country people coming in from a cold drive, when a store that is warm enough all over with no convenient source of heat, will be neglected. It is, of course, important to have the store comfortable and well ventilated on account of the better work the selling force can do under such conditions. Make it a part of your service to help people to 147 Getting More Drug Store Business prepare any parcels for shipment by mail or express. Advertise that you will gladly help pack Christmas presents for shipment. Have a table convenient where such work can be done without interfering with other business. Keep plenty of large sheets of heavy paper there, and twine and Christmas seals and "Don't open until Christmas" pasters, and don't think it necessary to make a charge for this kind of help or for the material used. If people bring in articles bought elsewhere and ask you to help wrap them, do it cheerfully. This is a kind of service people want and appreciate and it will help business. More than at any other time is it worth while to make it possible for customers to sell themselves. This means putting price cards everywhere and leaving all goods of suitable sorts where people can examine them and find out what they want to know about quality and cost. Thus, when all the sales- people are busy a customer is less likely to go out without finding out what he wanted to know, with- out buying the thing he wants. Don't get the erro- neous idea that people do not like to buy for gifts goods that have been exhibited with prices on them. This may go in a limited number of very exclusive shops catering to millionaires only, but in your store there is nothing to it. Your customers are not going to buy without knowing what the goods cost, and if you show a window full of price-marked goods, peo- ple are going to come in and buy when otherwise they would be afraid to chance coming in to ask 148 Getting More Drug Store Business the price. This applies to more folks than you would think. Spend a few dollars in wages for a boy to open the door for customers and to make himself useful around the front of the store, helping people to get started with their bundles, helping them to get their parcels loaded into wagons or cars, ready to run out with a farmer's packages when he drives up for them. Borrow a coat and cap with brass buttons and braid for the boy to wear and give your store a metropolitan atmosphere. The more unused your people are to such things, the better the advertise- ment. Advertise that purchases for gifts may be left with you for delivery at any time. Assume respon- sibility for the safe delivery of any Christmas gift to any place in town, or to the express company or the post office for shipment to any out of town address. The delivery of gifts is a burdensome part of giving and when people can be relieved of that feature of the work, they will appreciate it and pat- ronize the store that helps them. Of course, all stores do this sort of thing, but very few make as much capital of it as they might. A circular letter sent to a good list of possible customers, detailing all the kinds of holiday service you are prepared to render will result in many sales that otherwise would have gone elsewhere. There are few stores where holiday shopping will not be helped and the people kept in a better buying mood by music. There is no great expense attached 149 Getting More Drug Store Business nowadays to having continuous music in a store because good phonographs of many makes are avail- able and records are cheap. There may be a few fussy people who do not care for music of the sort under such conditions, but such people are few and far between, and they are not liberal buyers any- way. Give me the people who will like the music and anybody who likes can have the other folks. On days when business is dull and there are not many customers, the music helps take off the lone- some effect of the empty store. It makes what customers there are feel that there is something going on. The "Nobody home" atmosphere in a store in holiday season is almost as fatal as it is in a theatre. I don't know how brightly you light your store at ordinary times, but at holiday times, you can scarcely have too much light and you cannot afford a dimly-lighted stock. This applies during the day as well as at night. Use plenty of artificial light whenever you need it to make the store look its very best. The store that is a bright spot on the street will attract more attention during the dark hours, and it must be bright inside as well as in the windows. Make the store conspicuous by its bril- liancy and nobody will go along the street without seeing it and being tempted to come in. If the weather is suitable, keep the front door wide open. The open door will actually cause peo- ple to come in as they slowly inspect the windows and inside displays from the street. If your store 150 Getting More Drug Store Business is on the sidewalk level and the door open, it will mean a large percentage more visitors. At all events you can have a door that opens easily instead of one that has to be pushed or pulled with force when it is moved. Don't have an automatic closing device on it so strong that it pushes people out into the street, or slaps them in the face as they try to get in. People like things made easy for them in connection with Christmas shopping. Don't be afraid to slash into some prices during the last days. While price-cutting is generally deplorable, there are goods in your holiday stock that will, after Christmas, have about the selling value of a last year's birds' nest. Don't delude yourself with the idea that you will be able to work off a good deal of the left-over stuff for New Year's presents. "There ain't no such animal." Get rid of the goods bought for holiday sale before Christmas. Better take less than cost than carry them a year to get cost and do it with hard work at that. No matter how much you hate to see children paw over your goods under ordinary circumstances, you cannot afford to act peevish about it during the holiday season. Of course, this does not mean that you need to allow goods to be depreciated in this way, but it is just as easy to stop such things cheer- fully as it is to do it in a way that makes the child and probably his parents feel a little disgruntled. Even when the children are alone, they will go home and tell what happens in the store. We all I5i Getting More Drug Store Business feel a warm spot for anybody who has been nice to our youngsters. I sometimes think that a good many merchants regard only the commercial aspect of the holiday trade, and because of this lose business. It is important that the store which is to secure a large share of Christmas trade get into the Christmas spirit. The store force should recognize the fact that this spirit is a part of the December work and everything possible should be done to make people feel like Christmas when they come in. You have heard people say in your store just before Christ- mas, " I've got to get some presents but I don't seem to feel that Christmas is coming so soon." Do everything you can to make them feel when they enter your store, that Christmas is coming and coming soon. Use all kinds of suitable decorations and displays, appropriate trimmings, special show cards and price tags, everything in the Christmas style. Give staple goods a Christmas look with holly decorations and special wrappings and holly tags. Get as far away from the ordinary, every day look of the store as you can. When people come into a store where the Christ- mas spirit is rampant, they begin to think Christmas and feel Christmas. When they merely look in they are led to think of things they want to give for Christmas, or of the things they would like to receive. The influence of the Christmas store is very marked on the public. The bigger the store, of course, the bigger its influence in a general way. 152 Getting More Drug Store Business In trying to interest people in buying Christmas presents, bear in mind the fact that you are adver- tising to people who do not use the goods they are to buy. That is, you advertise men's goods to women at Christmas time. You advertise women's wants to man. This is one phase of holiday adver- tising that must be borne in mind. Another phase is one that is sometimes forgotten, that is the cre- ating of a want for goods in the minds of people who may let others know of the want. In other words, there is a phase of this advertising which consists in making people want the holiday things for themselves in order that you may profit by somebody else finding out the want and buying to meet it. The success of your store in handling holiday lines is not dependent upon your devising brand new plans for selling or displaying. It depends upon your carrying out enthusiastically the plans you have. If you will carry out just as far as you can with the enthusiastic help of your employes the suggestions I have made right in this article, you can develop more holiday trade than you had last year, and the harder you work at making the sea- son's business a success, the more successful it will be. It is just a matter of effort. The public is in December in a frame of mind to respond to your efforts generously. 153 CHAPTER XX Christmas Sales from Regular Stock Some druggists load up with a great lot of miscel- laneous stuff called " Holiday Goods " and endeavor to capitalize Christmas in that way. Others put in no holiday stuff and let the season go by without any effort to make more business by reason of it. I have nothing to say against the taking on of a line of holiday goods. Within reason, it is a good way to increase December sales and profits and keep the force busy during a month when people's atten- tion turns from the bare necessities to the more seasonable things. A good holiday line, carefully bought and well handled and closed out by Decem- ber 25, is a good investment, but be sure that it is sold out, or practically so, or the profits on the whole deal will be left tied up in unsalable stuff. What I want to urge right now is the pushing of the regular stock for Christmas gift purposes. Every druggist has in stock more or less goods that can be sold for Christmas presents if he will make the effort so to sell them. They come within the list ' of useful gifts, and useful gifts always sell well. In getting ready to go after such business, one of the first things is to get a supply of holly decorated empty boxes of various suitable sizes, and perhaps a roll of holly wrapping paper. With these a Christmasy look can be given to almost anything. One of the last things the druggist thinks of as adapted to Christmas selling is a chamois skin. In 154 Getting More Drug Store Business fact, few druggists give chamois skins the push they ought to give them the year round. Have you, for example, ever laid a kip of large size skins on the counter where people could examine them, and called every woman customer's attention to them ? A chamois skin is an attractive piece of merchan- dise. It has a nice look and a good feel. A woman will pick one up and exhibit a good deal of interest in it if she happens along where the goods are shown. If the skin is a big, high grade one, it will attract attention and interest by its size. Most people are familiar only with small chamois skins, cheaper ones. Well, lay out a pile of fine, big skins. Whenever any one notices them, exercise a little salesmanship. Say, " One of those would make a dandy Christmas gift for somebody. When people buy them, they generally buy smaller ones to save money. But they like the big ones, and any housekeeper will be pleased to get one. Notice how soft it is ; no hard spots ; same thickness all over ; no thin spots to wear through. A nice big chamois makes window cleaning the easiest kind of work. Nothing better for wiping up dust from furniture ; absolutely neces- sary around an automobile. " The druggist, while he is talking, folds up a skin neatly and pulls out a holly box and puts the skin into it and remarks, " You see what a nice looking present one makes all put up in a gift box. We don't charge for the box ; #1.85 for a chamois of this size." There's a little selling display and talk that will 155 Getting More Drug Store Business make sales ; Christmas sales at Christmas time ; ordinary sales at another time. By that method you can sell more chamois skins the year around. You will find that a sponge sale can often be added to the chamois sale. You perhaps would not bring out sponges for Christmas gifts in the first place, but when you sell the chamois, bring out that box you will keep near by with a fine, well shaped sheep's wool sponge in it. This is a box that will hold the sponge and a chamois placed on top of it. Try for the combination sale. Have one box with a bleached sponge and one with an unbleached sponge and show them side by side. Of course, it will pay to put a display of boxed sponges and chamois in the win- dow, with a big card explaining the quality and value and household uses. You have always had some hair brushes in fancy boxes for the holiday trade, but often the quality of the boxes surpassed that of the skimpy brushes, made to sell rather than to use. Whether you go into the fancy toilet cases or not, you can sell ordinary hair brushes and other brushes for Christmas gifts. Make a window display of good quality brushes •of all prices. Display them on a background of contrasting color and polish the backs to make them look their best. Place a few boxes in the window and a big card that shall read, u Fine hair brushes for holiday gifts. The value is in the brush, not the box. Each brush boxed free. ,, Put price tags on every brush, preferably with a word of descrip- tion of the grade and quality. 156 Getting More Drug Store Business You will probably want to show combs at the same time, and match up some combs and brushes for the display. When any one comes in and talks brush, you will, of course, as you would at any time of year, mention a comb as a possible additional need. But hair brushes are only one sort of brush . Show other brushes for Christmas trade — hand brushes, nail brushes, tooth brushes, infants' hair brushes, clothes brushes, etc. Make up a brush window display, showing all kinds of brushes, each kind in a suitable holly box ; also boxes containing assort- ments of different sorts of brushes. Advertise brushes as u Useful Christmas Gifts — Brushes Everybody Wants." You can make almost anything look like holiday goods by displaying it in a setting of Christmas greens and red bells. Haven't you before now sold a good many hot water bottles for gifts ? Of course you have. Every Christmas people come in and get them to give to friends who haven't too much money, but have ill- ness in the family. Well, cash in on that prospective demand and increase it as much as you are able. Display hot water bottles in a holiday setting, in holly boxes, with a card that may read something like this : Have You a Friend Who Would Appreciate One of These ? Small ones for the face Middle sized ones for baby 157 Getting More Drug Store Business Large ones for feet or back Priced from $i to $3 Each packed in a handsome holly box Hot water bottles nowadays come in attractive colors and are handsomely finished. They are good looking goods. They sell well for gifts if you remind people of them. In poorer families, many of the necessities of the time are bought because they are needed and are added to the Christmas of the family in order to make more of a showing on Christmas morning. Many things are given in the family that would not be given outside. One of the possible gifts of this sort is soap. You can make a display of handsomely wrapped and boxed soaps that will result in holiday sales. You have no goods in the store more attractive than your best toilet soaps. They class almost with per- fumes as holiday goods. See what you can do by displays, in the window and otherwise, to get people to make their soap purchases for the season from you as holiday gifts. This is where one of the druggist's best regular ' lines is also essentially a holiday line in December. You will probably find, if you have not noticed it before, that most of the perfumes for Christmas are bought by men to be given to women. This means that the perfume sales will be mainly in the last three or four days before Christmas, for men do their buying late, except for occasional things of importance that must be selected early. It means, 158 Getting More Drug Store Business too, that the goods are easy to sell, because men come in and buy quickly and are amenable to your suggestion and persuasion. This is good and profit- able business. Make your window display of this line four or five days before Christmas, and put prices on everything. Make it an appeal to men instead of to women, as- the perfume display would be at another season. Show the men what to buy in order to get a stylish perfume for a friend. Suggest on a show card that the man put it up to you to advise him what perfume to buy. Tell him that you know what will please. Guarantee satis- faction, allowing the exchange of perfume if the bottle has not been opened. Give the man the information he needs as to what odors are up to date. Don't load him up with white rose and jockey club just because you can. You want to please his friend, because it may mean a repeat purchase from the recipient of the gift. You will get your name on the bottle somewhere, if only on the bottom by a neat paster made for that purpose. Get up a form letter to mail out to your mailing list of men, calling their attention to the fact that you have an up to date line of the best perfumes in packages selling for all prices. Offer to pack up the purchase so it can be mailed, or agree to make delivery anywhere in town at any stipulated hour, There is a big opportunity in this perfume trade^ and you can land a big business in the goods on the 22nd, 23rd, 24th, if you go after it. 159 Getting More Drug Store Business In considering the perfume trade, don't neglect sachets. This is something that sells earlier. Sachet powder in bulk or in any form for use in fancy work for Christmas sells early. It is about the first sign of the coming of Christmas, and you must advertise it as soon as you can. Don't be afraid of the ten cent trade along this line. Encourage the people who want a dime's worth of sachet powder in bulk to come to you . You want their business, not so much for that dime as for the purpose of making them regular customers of your store. This is where you help the women to buy some- thing that is all right for the men. Advertising and window display will make the sales. Women pay more attention to both of these than men do. Don't hesitate to claim for yourself a perfect knowledge of what is what in razors and shaving materials. You do know and you are going to give your women customers honest, umbiased advice. You want their men to have just the right razor and just the right equipment. You have in stock fine goods of this sort, includ- ing some handsome packages with gold finished safety razors in them. You can please a woman who is looking for something expensive. See that the buyer of a razor has a chance to buy shaving cream or soap and whatever goes with the shave. Advertise a sale of shaving creams, etc., to bring business from women who are interested in fitting up hubby with what may be lacking in his shaving kit — razor blades, soap, lather brush, witch hazel, etc. 1 60 Getting More Drug Store Business In making such sales you have also an opportunity to suggest and sell military hair brushes and other brushes, anything, in fact, that goes with a man's toilet equipment. Both of these items are regular stock in practically all drug stores, and, of course, sell more at Christ- mas time, and in many instances are made much of. They are both late sellers. Candy sells late because people want to buy it "fresh " and because it is not the main present given to an intimate friend, but a last edition to the gifts already bought. And it sells late because, for the most part, it is bought by men. Make the candy display a feature of the last week and get up the most elaborate window and inside displays you can. This is a line that repays well making a very attractive display. A big dis- play makes it look as if your store is headquarters for fine candy. It shows you are specializing on the goods and it brings you out of the class of stores merely using candy as a side line. Show handsome packages of all sizes and give the public a wide range of price choice, putting prices on the packages in the window and in the inside display. Don't make it necessary for any- one to ask, "How much is that?" The candy trade of the last December days is a fast trade. Men rush in and if your candy is well displayed, they say, " Give me that and that and that and wrap 'em up separately." You make big sales quickly. If you feature bulk candy, have some boxes of vari- ous sized already put up with the popular combina- 161 Getting More Drug Store Business tions of mixture. Men don't want to wait. Help them to make it snappy. The men will be your best candy buyers and you can get a lot of their money that way. As for cigars, both men and women buy them. The women will buy them with a good deal of dis- cussion and it is up to you to help them to get cigars that will give satisfaction and prevent there being anything to the joke about Christmas cigars when they come from your store. If possible find out what the man's tastes are who is to receive the cigars. Talk the matter over and then offer the cigar you feel sure will give satisfac- tion, and you will have to offer to allow the return of the smokes if some other brand is preferred. Caution the purchaser against breaking the box open and particularly against dropping it, as that might spoil part of the contents and make it unsatis- factory to have them returned for exchange. There will be instances where you can agree to find out what brands of cigars the man smokes, because you know him or his friends or his club. Be willing to take the trouble necessary to give satisfaction. You will make a pleased customer — perhaps two of them. There are many other things in your staple stock that may be worked into the holiday field. Among these are talcum powders, especially those suited for the baby's toilet. There are spices which might be put up in assortments of four-ounce tins. Speed up the sale of anything you think might be used for gift purposes. 162 CHAPTER XXI The Telephone as a Sales Aid Did you ever call up a fellow business man on the telephone, expecting to give him a friendly tip, or even to buy something from him, or merely to extend some business courtesy, only to receive such sharp, snapped-off replies that you backed out as quickly as you could without doing what you had expected to do ? If you were about to make a purchase — perhaps you did make it, but it was with the feeling that you wished you had either gone in person or else tried some other store — it is a safe bet that you stopped short of buying as much or of doing as great a favor as you planned before telephoning. The cold-blooded, mechanical kind of treatment you get by telephone from some stores and from some people certainly does not incline you to go out of your way to do them favors or to give them business. If you get unpleasant telephone treat- ment at one store while another store treats you as you like to be treated, it requires only one guess to tell where you are going to buy next time. I don't suppose the employes in any store are impolite over the telephone intentionally any more than they would be impolite in person to a cus- tomer, but what does that have to do with it ? If I am rudely treated when I call up a store on the 'phone, I have no way of knowing that the rudeness 163 Getting More Drug Store Business is unintentional, that they mean to be nice to me but don't know how. If the clerks (or even the proprietors) are so care- less and thoughtless as not to know what politeness over the telephone is, am I supposed to be possessed of second-sight to know that and therefore to excuse them ? No indeed ! I have to take the telephone service I get at its face value, and the store suffers accordingly. Talking over the telephone and talking face to face are two different things, and only when a man realizes this and acts accordingly will he get a good telephone manner. Of course, some druggists may not care how they treat people by telephone, just as some seem not to care how they treat their cus- tomers personally, but those are few, and I have nothing to say to them, because it would be a waste of time A man who is so thick-skinned that he does not notice or mind rudeness from others will sometimes be rude himself and does not realize it. He will not be able to understand the sensitiveness of folks who want courteous treatment and who will not come back to the store that gives him anything else. There are conditions in a personal conversation that makes it possible to speak as one cannot over the telephone. The facial expression, the smile or the gesture that accompany a sharp remark often take away the sting and perhaps make it agreeable. These things are lacking over the telephone. All we get is just exactly what the other fellow says, 164 Getting More Drug Store Business his mere words, unaccompanied by anything to soften the harshness. It is a good deal like letter- writing in the necessity for avoiding attempts to be funny when they may be misunderstood. Some people have unpleasant voices, or they habitually speak in a quick, abrupt way. It is nat- ural with them and means nothing. People who know them well may think nothing of it when talk- ing with them in person, but even those familiar with their manner will feel an unconscious resent- ment when they meet it in telephoning. I don't care whether your abruptness is due to a grouch, to nervousness or to carelessness, it will hurt your business. People will not really like to meet with it when they come into the store, though they may put up with it, but they will not stand it over the telephone — not if there is another drug- gist at hand who knows how to use the 'phone properly. There are some druggists who seem to be in a tremendous hurry as soon as they get to the tele- phone. Not that there is any reason for it. Appar- ently, they have time enough, and you might see them directly afterward sitting back, taking it easy with their feet up on the prescription desk. Their telephone hurry is just a matter of habit. These same druggists will give a patron all the time wanted for making a personal purchase over the counter, and they never act hurried when you go into the store to see them. Their hurried manner is just a nervous habit. They may have a right to be nerv- 165 Getting More Drug Store Business ous, but they are foolish to allow it to interfere with their service. This nervous haste makes it difficult for the cus- tomer to get any information by telephone. The druggist answers in monosyllables. If he is asked a question he can not answer readily, he says "I don't know," and then he stops and leaves it to the customer to start things going again. He seems to be anxious to hang up the receiver and get away. All he really seems to care about, and he doesn't show that any too much, is an absolute order. I hate to do business over the telephone or any other way with a man who acts as if I were keeping him from making his train. I can not get satisfac- tory treatment from him. He may get my money once, but never again ! Don't you know men — business men, too — who seem to think they can say things over the tele- phone that they wouldn't dare to say to your face ? They feel safer at a distance, I suppose. As a mat- ter of fact, the telephone does not give anybody a license to be rude. It ought to encourage courtesy, because to get the same impression across by tele- phone you have to use more tact and more polite- ness than would be necessary in person. If you are not getting the telephone business of your regular customers, if folks seem to avoid tele- phoning orders to you, sit down and consider, and then take notice of how you and your clerks handle your next few telephone calls. See whether it is the store telephone or the customer's telephone 166 Getting More Drug Store Business that is always hung up first, whether you make the customer do all the talking or whether you act like a salesman trying to please and persuade the possi- ble purchaser. Your telephone mistakes ought to be easy to cor- rect. The only thing necessary is to try to correct them. People will call up almost any druggist to turn in a simple order, but when it comes to calling up to find out about something before buying, or when, perhaps, there is no certainty of making the pur- chase, that is a different matter. People who are accustomed enough to shopping in the store and to asking to see things they have not yet decided to buy will hesitate to do any such shopping by tele- phone — in some drug stores. Haven't you heard your wife say she would not call up a certain grocer or a certain dry goods store where she often buys in person, just because she does not like their telephone manner? Haven't you seen some member of your family hesitate before calling up a store, pause and think over what she wanted to say, because she knew she could not think of it all as she went along when she found herself with some merchant at the other end of the wire demanding to know what she wanted ? Well customers may feel that way in telephoning to you. Next time a woman calls up the store, just imagine that she is feeling she must be sure and remember all she wanted to say because she thinks of you as being in a hurry to ring off. Then make 167 Getting More Drug Store Business it apparent that you are in no hurry. Encourage her to think of all the things she wanted to say. You will find she will buy more in the end. There is such a thing as salesmanship over the telephone, although to hear some merchants (I won't say drug- gists) answer their calls, you would not think it. The druggist who gives his patrons agreeable, unhurried telephone responses makes them want to call him up again. He turns them away feeling that the telephone is a great convenience, and ready to recommend his wire service to their friends. It is better advertising than you can buy with money if you have patrons who, when they hear acquaint- ances complaining of the telephone service of other stores, take pains to say that your store knows how to treat people by telephone. There are some lines of goods in your store that people cannot and will not buy off-hand. They must know something about them before they order. If you make it possible for them to find out about the goods by telephone, you increase your chances of sales in that field because you make it easy for shut-ins and for people at a distance to order intelligently. You cannot get this class of business merely by knowing how to answer the tele- phone with " Hello, this is Brown's," and "Thank you," (or possibly a shorter u 'k you" when an order is taken. There are plenty of people who are not as much at home in using the telephone as you are, and they find it difficult to understand you. If you act peev- 168 Getting More Drug Store Business ish because they do not catch your meaning at first, they are sure to become embarrassed and you don't get their business. On the other hand, if you take pains to make them feel that you are not in a hurry and if you see that they fully understand you, they are comfortable about it and you do get their busi- ness, that time and other times. People who do not hear you at first will hate to ask again and again and often they will pretend to understand when they really do not. No matter what the cause of the failure to understand you, whether it be deafness, lack of experience, a noisy wire, or outside noises, see that your message gets across before you go on or give it up. You know how a railroad employe sometimes gives you information about trains. So fast and so much of it that you don't know what he said, and he turns away with such an air of finality after tell- ing you, that you go on without knowing, rather than ask his royal highness to say it again and say it slowly. There are drug stores, I regret to say, where telephone calls get a somewhat similar treat- ment. When people ask for information over the 'phone,, give it to them. If you haven't it in your head, get it just as if they were in your presence. When you say you don't know, you deliberately pass the cus- tomer on to another store, and possibly that cus- tomer may get the kind of treatment elsewhere that will keep him from coming back to you. You know what happens when a customer walks out of 169 Gettino More Drug Store Business the door saying he will be back again. He usually visits some other store before coming back. If you fail to give the information sought when it is asked for, you are likely to lose the opportunity to give it at all. Be as courteous over the telephone to the person who seems to be merely an inquirer as to the person who is obviously a buyer. You never know when an inquiry today may develop into a sale tomorrow, and you never know when an inquirer treated well will send you another customer later. You can make people feel all right or all wrong over the tele- phone, and according as they feel, so they will act about your store. Your telephone is there for use, for people to use in calling you up. That is why you pay rental for it. Remind people that your store is no farther away than their telephone, and when business comes that way, take proper care of it. You can never teach the public to remember such a number as 7396 There are too many kinds of figures in the number. Simplify it. Get as low a number as you can if it is a good one. Number 1 is of course ideal, and then come 11, in, mi, 222, 2233, 1,000, 1234, 9876, etc. Numbers having some special association which makes them easy to remember maybe the year, your street number, number 13 or 23. Advertise your number, of -course, putting it on all of your advertising matter. See that your telephone is never out of order longer than necessary. Don't let it stand waiting 170 Getting More Drug Store Business for the repair man to take care of when he " gets around to it." Get him there at once. Arrange, if possible, to have calls turned in to some nearby 'phone where you can perhaps place a clerk tempo- rarily while your own instrument is out of order. Don't let the instrument go in a half efficient condition. Have a good one, the best you can get, even if it costs more, and see that it is always work- ing right. It costs no more for the rent of the best 'phone than for a poor instrument. You cannot give satisfactory service with an unsatisfactory tele- phone. When people find they do not hear well telephoning to your store, they call another store next time. Pay careful attention to the way you and your clerks talk over the telephone. Enunciate your words distinctly. Don't clip them short. Speak deliberately enough to be understood. Trying to make yourself heard does not mean trying to speak louder. Volume of sound will not make up for careless enunciation and haste. Talk into the receiver instead of at the floor or ceiling, and hold the receiver in front of your mouth and close enough to get the full vibration of your voice. Throw your voice forward as a singer is trained to do, instead of talking back in your throat. Take the gum out of your mouth (and leave it out). If you are smoking, lay your cigar aside. Give your telephone every chance to do its work right. Perhaps you are not very sure of how your tele- phone is served when you are away from the store. 171 Getting More Drug Store Business Call up your store once in a while and ask how things are getting along. Take note of how prompt a reply you get and what kind of a " hello " you get from the clerk. Let somebody else call up in your presence if you prefer. Don't worry about this being detective work. You have a right, in fact, it is your duty, to know how you are being served in your absence. You are paying for the right kind of service. You can hardly know too much about the way your store is run while you are not there. It is a good plan to have the clerks understand that you have the telephone for business rather than for social uses. It may seem like being a little close to object to the boys using the telephone all they want to, but it is not that you grudge any pos- sible expense, but that it means that customers may call up and find the "wire busy" and turn elsewhere at times, which might cost you the loss of valuable orders, or even a customer. If you have more than one telephone, and you should if the business warrants it, make it a rule that employes can use one 'phone when the other is not busy. Explain that you are not a telephone tightwad, but that you are anxious not to lose any trade. If you fail to get your money's worth out of your telephone rental, you have nobody to blame but yourself. The wires are there and there is business waiting to come over them. Educate the public to use your 'phone, and treat them right when they do use it. 172 CHAPTER XXII Message to the Druggist's Wife Perhaps your wish is for diamonds, for automo- biles, for Paris clothes, or for Oriental rugs. With- out a doubt there are many things you would like that more money would buy. You not infrequently wish the drug business brought bigger returns and paid bigger net profits. You wish this because you would like too see your husband better paid for the hard work he does, and because of the many things you would like that you now go without. But I doubt whether it has occurred to you that you might be helping to make the family business produce more. Of course you do help. The work you do in the home is just as much a part of the business of the family, and a part of supporting it, as the work your husband does in the store, and you ought to receive a definite portion of the income as your salary to be used as you want to use it. No matter how much of this kind of help you are giving, there are other ways in which you can be of more direct service. It is not necessary for you to go into the store and work to make the business grow. You can use your brains to that end with- out becoming a saleslady|or an office girl. Your woman's viewpoint, your woman's intuition, your other qualifications, will enable you to give advice about the management of the store that should not be ignored. If your husband has the idea that a 173 Getting More Drug Store Business woman can know nothing about how a drug store ought to be run, ask him what sex comprises nine- tenths of his customers and whether it is not rea- sonable to suppose that one of that sex might know something about what she likes and what other women like in a drug store. The first thing to do to help your husband in making a success of his business is to take a real interest in that business, not merely in what it pro- duces. The next thing is to show that interest. A large proportion of wives of druggists fail to show such an interest in the development of the business as will encourage their husbands taking them into confidence about it. I know, of course, that a part of the lack of obvi- ous interest on the part of these wives is due to the attitude of husbands who think their wives cannot understand business and that it is not worth while to try and show them about it. Don't be satisfied to allow your husband to continue in any such belief as that regarding your lack of intelligence. You can comprehend anything about the business that he can comprehend, and you can see farther through many problems. Once really interested in the business and in see- ing what you can do to help develop it, you will find opportunities opening all the time. You will go into the store with different eyes and you will find your- self taking notice of the ways in which the store interior might be made more attractive to feminine eyes. You will be comparing your husband's store, 174 Getting More Drug Store Business your store, with other drug stores you have seen r and right away you will want to know why your store cannot be made to look as nice as Somebody's, or why it wouldn't be easy to use the same kind of arrangement you saw in a drug store in Some-other- town. You will notice dust and disorder where the men> have passed it by. You will see the fly-specked show cards that have become inconspicuous to the workers in the store because they have been there so long. You will see why patrons may not be pleased with goods that are being handed out in shop-worn cartons. Many little detrimental condi- tions, which, like the ticking of the clock, have become unnoticed and almost unnoticeable, you will observe because you can look at the store with the eyes of an outsider. If you have been the kind of a wife who has- visited the store only when in need of money or of something you could not leave it to your husband to choose and bring to you, you have been neglecting; your opportunities, not to say your duties. Your husband wants, or at least needs, more than anything else to find out what the public thinks of his store and of its service. You can find out more along this line in a week than he could find out in a year. Your own intuition and observation will tell you more than he can find out by asking others. If he is failing to get his share of the perfume trade, very likely you can tell him off-hand why it is so. If there is something about his location or 175 Getting More Drug Store Business about the manners of his clerks or about the way the telephone business is handled, something that is displeasing to the feminine public, you ought to be able to put your finger on the trouble. Your husband is an experienced merchandiser. He knows salesmanship and he thinks he knows display. But you understand femininity and the little illogical likes and dislikes of womankind. You may not be logical and your husband may think that logical explanations are against your reasoning, but your intuition and the conclusions you some- times reach by jumping at them will be right when his logic is wrong. Study the advertising pages of the magazines for new goods you think your husband could sell in his store. Study the tastes and fads of the women you meet to discover why they are sending out of town for goods your store might supply to them if it had them in stock. Study the methods of the stores that reach after your patronage with their advertising methods. The way the dry goods store or the shoe man or the milliner succeed in interesting you to the extent of wanting to buy their goods may be a way in which your store could interest customers in its lines. And then study the drug journals your husband takes. This is one of the most important means of getting in closer touch with the business. Get him to bring home each drug journal. Go through every one, from cover to cover, advertising pages and all. You will see many opportunities there that the men 176 Getting More Drug Store Business have passed by. It may be that your husband feels that he is too busy to read the drug journals. You can be his representative in this. He needs to know what they contain. It is scarcely possible for a man to run a pharmacy in an up-to-date and successful manner and not read the trade journals. Perhaps you have a good deal of time to read and can make this your greatest means of assisting the business. There are many articles in the drug store that women hesitate to buy while men are standing around the store. If your store is losing a most desirable and profitable form of business because of the presence of men friends of your husband or of his clerks, you are in a position to discover this fact and make it clear. When it comes to choosing new side lines, you can help wonderfully in getting the right ones. Where your husband only surmises that there is a demand for a certain kind of goods he does not keep, but might, you are in a position to know about the demand. And what you do not know, you can find out by a little discreet questioning among your acquaintances. You can act as a scout for the store in seeking new opportunities for broadening the stock. In the way of added equipment, such as show cases and fixtures, your opinion ought to be worth much. You know how conveniences for the display of goods appeal to you in the dry goods stores. Per- haps your husband does not realize the importance 177 Getting More Drug Store Business of display fixtures. Perhaps he regards the buying* of a new showcase as a useless expense. You should be in a position to tell him whether or not he can make his stock more attractive to women customers by the addition of new cases, whether he is showing his goods well enough or not. Even though your husband's store already pro- vides you with all the necessaries of life and perhaps with its luxuries, still it is important that you help him to grow further, if only because he is ambitious and wants to become a more successful business man. Druggists 7 wives, as a class, are more than ready to cooperate with their husbands. Now and then there is one who feels above her husband's business, wishes he were not running a store. Now and then one feels an utter distaste for all things connected with making money, though there is never any dis- taste for spending it. Now and then one may not care whether her husband succeeds or not. None of these are you, however. You are one who wants to help, both for the results obtainable and for the pleasure of helping the man whose life is devoted to making you happy and comfortable. As a woman you have the feminine viewpoint in looking at the store. As an outsider (speaking technically), you know how the store and its service appear to the public. As a wife you are in a posi- tion to tell the proprietor candidly what you think. How, then, can anyone be of greater assistance in the development of the business ? i 7 8 CHAPTER XXIII To Have the Best Clerks The usual method of building up a force of good clerks is to keep watch of the clerks in the various drug stores and, when a new man is needed, hire the best one in sight. By following this plan a druggist can get together a high-class force and he will be paying top salaries. One trouble with this plan for very general use is that there are not many " best " clerks and not enough even " good " ones to go around. Another trouble is that it means paying the biggest wages of any druggist in town. The good men cannot be pulled from the other stores unless they are offered more money than they were getting. So the plan of picking out the best timber avail- able, wherever it may be found, cannot be recom- mended. It could not be followed by more than a few stores, and those few would have to be the ones with the most capital. There is another and a saner method that can be followed, though it is perhaps harder work. It is that of developing the clerks into the kind of help wanted, eliminating, of course, those who are not capable of development — who are hopelessly in- efficient. If it is a fair question, what are you doing to make your clerks better help, beyond, possibly, paying them a little more money as they show better ability ? 179 Getting More Drug Store Business When you employ a green hand who knows noth- ing about the drug business, you try to get him familiar with the stock of such things as he is at liberty to sell. The first thing you do is to try to make him self-supporting, good enough, so he will be worth what you pay him. That is done, really, as a selfish measure. Then you begin letting him learn something about drugs under proper super- vision, if he shows a desire to learn. If he is satis- fied to jog along without learning much of anything of drugs, you generally do not insist. You reason that it is his funeral if he won't try to learn. There are two kinds of young men looking for drug store employment. One young fellow prefers a drug store job because it looks a little more genteel. The other one wants a position in a good drug store because he takes pharmacy as a serious occupation and wants to learn it. So one of the things that is going to help a drug- gist to have good clerks is to develop a reputation for being anxious to see his clerks improve and make the most of themselves. The only way to get that reputation is to deserve it. The druggist who stops with merely being a boss will find that his clerks will feel just the same interest in him and in the business that he feels in them. Each clerk presents an individual problem, as far as personal development is concerned, and an employer ought to find means of getting so well acquainted with each that he will know what the clerk likes and wants to do and, so far as possible, 1 80 Getting More Drug Store Business what he aims to make of his life. The closer the clerk and the proprietor are to one another, the better work the clerk will do. A druggist ought to know the family conditions of every one in his store. He should know what demands there are upon the clerk for money, and how much he can save each month if he is willing to try. After the proprietor has paid him his wages the money is his for any use he sees fit to make of it, but as a personal friend you are interested in seeing that the money is not wasted, and of course you realize that the clerk who does waste his money is going to be tempted to waste it in ways that will react to his and to your disadvantage. At all events a clerk will be a better clerk if his financial affairs are in good order, and this is without saying any- thing about the chances of his becoming dishonest if he is always short of money and spends more than he earns. Anything a man can do to make the working con- ditions of the store better will help in keeping better clerks. If the prescription desk is ill-equipped, supplied only with old and broken spatulas, gradu- ates with broken bases, scales that have to be doctored up every few days to secure anything like accuracy from them, with unsystematic arrange- ment of supplies and fixtures and poisons, we can- not expect clerks to find it a pleasure to work there. If a store lacks the necessary equipment for keep- ing the place clean — a poor old broom, scarcely any dust cloths, a broken stepladder, worn-out 181 Getting More Drug Store Business sponges — it cannot be expected that the boys who do the cleaning will do it well. They take their cues from the tools with which they have to work. If we allow broken glass in our show-case or else- where to remain unrepaired indefinitely, we may be sure it will have its effect in making the employees careless about the looks of that case and others. If there is no place where a clerk can wash up and brush his hair and do it without having to use a dirty old towel and an uninviting lavatory it can't even be hoped that clerks will improve in appear- ance. This is important from every point of view, and there should be ample accommodations of this kind. Some clerks seem always to have a group of acquaintances standing around, waiting to gossip with them. Much as the clerks may like this visit- ing habit, it is not compatible with good service and must be eliminated. But don't think that in putting an end to it you are offending any good clerk. There are good clerks who are embarrassed by the tendency of their friends to loaf in the store, but they do not know just how to avoid it. Any druggist will find that in talking over plans with clerks he will receive from them some valuable suggestions. The brains of the store are not all concentrated under the hat of the proprietor. Some of the future's best proprietors may be passing through the store as clerks, and it is a mistake to think that because they are employees they are barren of ability to think and devise. 182 Getting More Drug Store Business Now and then a druggist has the idea that it is a mistake to develop in a clerk the ability that makes a good manager or proprietor, for fear that clerk might start a store in competition. The new stores and the new managers are going to come anyway, and it is mighty poor business to put up with inade- quate service just because making a man a good clerk might some day make him a live competitor. No man need lay awake nights fearing that the secrets of his success will leak out. If they are worth anything they have been observed long since. Developing more friendly relations between the proprietor and the clerks and getting rid of the u I'm the boss " attitude is a real help in many ways. The tendency of the times is away from the sharply- drawn line separating the boss from his employees, and this is true in drug stores as well as in factories. Make your business more of a mutual affair and make your relations with clerks those of mutual interest. Then you will find your store getting the best available clerks and holding them. 183 CHAPTER XXIV A Chapter for Clerks Salesmanship is helped a great deal by developing a friendly relation between the clerk and the cus- tomer. This is made easier by a common interest. You, the clerk, and your customer will have a com- mon interest if you develop an actual or an apparent interest in something which has a special interest for the customer. Most of the people who come into the store have fads or hobbies of one kind or another, and if they do not show any interest about anything else you mention, they will show an interest in that fad when you talk about it or when you give them a chance to talk about it. Not being a mind reader, you cannot know what a man's special interest is without some source of information, and unless you are a veritable human filing cabinet or card index, you cannot remember the fads of hundreds of people, or even of scores, unless you have help. Help is simple enough in the form of a vest pocket memorandum in which you set down, alphabetically indexed the names of the people you meet and opposite those names, the special interests of each. To find out what fads to mention, note the conversation of the people you meet, inside the store or out. Notice what cus- tomers discuss when other clerks are waiting on them. Develop a little Sherlock Holmes ability and you 184 Getting More Dgug Store Business will easily discover this man to be an enthusiastic amateur photographer, that one to be a connoisseur in pipes, this woman to be a devoted Red Cross worker. It may seem foolish to be listing up the people of your town in a little book and itemizing their habits, but there is nothing foolish about it. It is business.. If one customer is crazy about golf, let him talk golf to you. He will go away pleased with himself. Talk baseball to the baseball fan. You do not need to know all about these subjects. Just know enough to ask a few intelligent questions. Nine times in ten the customer will want to do the talking on the subject and the tenth time he will do it if he is encouraged. I don't mean to say that talking to a woman about Red Cross work will help to sell her a better hot water bottle than she would otherwise have bought.. You do not want to mix up outside talk and selling talk. The talk about the fad of the customer is a. matter for casual conversation while you wrap up the parcel, while you make change, while you escort the customer to the door. It serves to taper off from business and to send the customer away feel- ing that you are interested in him or her for more than merely the money to be got out of the deal. It is developing friendly relations with the cus- tomer that makes that customer look upon your drug store as the regular source of supply in that kind of goods. When a customer comes in, you sell him a hair 185 Getting More Drug Store Business brush because you have the kind of hair brush he needs at the price he wants to pay. But you get him back next week for a safety razor because when he was in for the brush you made him feel at home and pleased with himself. You gave him the idea that you regarded him as a person of consequence whose trade you appreciated, and you talked to him and allowed him to talk about just the things he most enjoys talking about. As you get acquainted with people's fads, you get better acquainted with the people themselves. When you gain knowledge of a person's special interests, you very likely find there is a connection between those interests and the drug store. You have things to sell that fit in with amateur photography or golf- ing or motoring. We all like the clerk who shows an interest in things that interest us, particularly when he exhibits a willingness to listen while we talk about those things. We go back to the store where that clerk is employed. On what they call the "Flatiron" corner in a small city in the Middle West is a drug store with a salesman who knows how to turn chance customers into steady customers, and I believe that shaking hands the right way at the right time has a good deal to do with his success. It's easy enough to shake hands. There is more to his method than just sticking his hand out toward you at certain times. There has to be some head- work behind handshaking. Not everybody wants 1 86 Getting More Drug Store Business to shake hands, and even those who might be influ- enced that way don't want to shake hands all the while. To crowd a visitor into shaking hands against his inclinations is to injure your cause. It is a mistake to put out your hand and hold it there until the customer is shamed into taking it. Don't offer to shake hands unless it is a natural thing to do, but when it is a logical action, do it and do it right. I went into this u Flatiron " corner store one day to get a toothbrush. This salesman was very accom- modating. He didn't try to sell me the kind of brush he thought I ought to have instead of the one I wanted. Yet he tried to show me what was the best thing to buy, and he knew about toothbrushes. As I see it now, I got into conversation with him because he wanted to get acquainted and make me a regular customer. At the time, I thought I was the one who was getting acquainted with him. He found out who I was and he acted as if he was glad to make my acquaintance. Instead of merely wait- ing on me politely, he made me a friend of the store. Well, there was no handshaking then, which I call to your notice. But I had occasion to go back there in a couple of weeks. The same clerk was in sight when I went in. He was busy, but he excused himself for a minute and came out and shook hands and said he would wait on me soon if no one else was free first. I said I would wait. It was the handshake I think that made me say I would wait for him. He might have extended me the same 187 Getting More Drug Store Business courtesy minus the handshake and I would have accepted the first available clerk. He knew how to shake hands, which had a good deal to do with it. He also knew when. If he had pounced upon me with the college freshman wrench, or if he had stuck out a limp paw and given me a kind of cemetery flop, I would have been glad to be rid of him, but he shook hands firmly, quickly, with a heartiness that was welcome, and with a look into my eyes instead of at my necktie or over my shoulder. He meant the cordiality he showed and I knew he meant it. Just by showing me that he was interested in me and considered me in a friendly way, he made me a friend, and a friend of the store. This would not work on everyone. I am sure of that because no one plan does. There are some people who would not want to shake hands at all. Different people must be handled differently, so you have to know when to shake hands as well as how to do it. Reading is a great help to a clerk. It is not merely putting in so many minutes or hours each day reading that counts. An hour spent in reading may be a damage to you instead of a help. Most drug clerks probably spend time enough in read- ing if it were spent in reading the right sort of things. Crowding into one's brain the contents of edition after edition of evening papers, each differing from the previous only in the matter of red ink head- lines ; poring over the last number of M America's 1 88 Getting More Drug Store Business Greatest Magazine of Mushy Stories " ; that only tends to make a literary sewer of one's brain. What a drug clerk needs to read is the sort of thing that will help him to a greater intelligence, a larger vocabulary, a better knowledge of drug store goods. He needs, of course, to know more about human nature and about life, but not as he will get the knowledge from reading trash. Any good, standard literature will help your mind, but the drug trade journals and books on the busi- ness will have the greatest value as a business help and they will equip you for higher positions. You cannot keep well informed about the condi- tions in the drug trade without reading the drug trade papers. Conditions are constantly changing. You cannot take proper care of your customers and answer their questions intelligently unless you know what is going on in the trade in general. The more a clerk knows about the line of business in which he is engaged, the more he will impress his cus- tomers as being efficient and trustworthy. To know more about the goods is to be able to sell more of them. The drug journals are spending their good money to print just the things the drug clerk needs to know to succeed. There is no reason in the clerk leaving it to the boss to read the trade papers and tell his force about what is in them. With all the best intentions in the world, the boss hasn't time to do that properly. It is up to you, the clerk, to find out for yourself what is in those papers and according 189 Getting More Drug Store Business as you do or do not study them, you will or you will not succeed in getting well up the ladder of promo- tion. You certainly cannot hope to become fitted to manage a store unless you are a student of the trade press. The man who thinks he can get ahead on the basis of picking up all his own knowledge from experience has no place in the retail drug trade today. We have to profit by others' experiences and we had to read to get them . Clothes may not make the man, but they may and often do mar him. If a drug clerk doesn't look like a successful and prosperous clerk, it is going to be much harder for him to become one. Clothes have great influence in giving a man confidence in himself. A drug clerk ought to dress well. Now, I don't mean by that that you should wear your Sunday- go-to-meeting clothes every day or that you ought to dress beyond your means. It costs enough now- adays to buy any kind of clothes, but if you are much of a clerk, you can earn enough to buy suita- ble clothes, and if you are not much of a clerk, per- haps you will be a better one when you get some good clothes and try to live up to them. To dress well simply means to dress so that people do not think about your clothes, but simply realize that your appearance is pleasing. You don't want conspicuous clothes to distract attention from the goods you are trying to sell. You don't want a brilliant red or green necktie dazzling the eyes of the person trying to concentrate on talcum powder or bath towels. 190 Getting More Drug Store Business See that your clothes fit and that they are always clean and pressed. Taking better care of your clothes will make them last longer as well as making them look better while they last. Plenty of customers will not notice it if you are untidily dressed, but the people whose business is worth most will notice it and many sensitive indi- viduals will simply refuse to patronize a store where an untidy clerk stands behind the counter. Perhaps people ought not to be so fussy about clerks' clothes, but they are and we can't go behind the returns. Even the folks who don't care how you look are not going to be offended if you look well dressed. Neat clothes simply add one more influence in your favor, and favorable influences are not so many that any are to be spared. All of your customers prefer goods with a reputa- tion, goods they know are all right because they have had them before or because they have heard what good goods they are. They may not care much about the fancy package, but they do feel an interest in the name on it because that name stands for something. The cus- tomer who could perhaps use to as good advantage a cheaper grade will often buy the better because of the value of the reputation. The goods with a reputation are goods of known value. We are willing enough that somebody else should take a chance, but we want to be sure our- selves. When you walk into a store to buy a hat or a pair of shoes, you put your trust in the kind 191 Getting More Drug Store Business you know about, the kind you have worn or have seen advertised for years. Of course, you cannot, as a drug clerk, give a line of goods their reputation. That is mainly up to the manufacturer, but you can spread that reputation and exalt it in people's minds so your store will profit. You might easily give the impression about a well-known article, a toilet soap, for example, that * There's really nothing remarkable about this soap after all." You might do that thoughtlessly or you might do it intentionally with a view to selling some private brand. One result of this might be to dis- courage the buying of such a soap at all. A cus- tomer led by advertising to buy a soap for shampoo use, expecting to use it often because it was recom- mended as a remedy for dandruff, if you were to belittle the advertised soap, might easily gain the impression that there is nothing to the dandruff claim and in the end fail to make any trial of the plan. This would result in loss of sales. You can easily impress the customer with the importance of the reputation the manufacturer has built up for an article and you can do it merely by the way you refer to the goods. Just a word or two or a tone of voice may do it. If you exhibit a pride in speaking of the Greene line of perfumes, as much as to say that mentioning the line is enough to carry conviction of quality, then you emphasize the reputation and you help make it possible for your store to cash in on that reputation. 192 Getting More Drug Store Business The buyer of anything you sell cannot be expected to think more highly of it than you appear to think. In fact, your praise of the goods is likely to be dis- counted somewhat, so give them as good a reputa- tion as they deserve. No one ever decides against a purchase because of the widespread good reputa- tion of the article. Do you find yourself compelled to reply frequently to customers^ queries, "I don't know?" If you do, then I doubt very much whether you are making good. You cannot give satisfaction either to your employer or to your customers as long as you con- tinue to admit to people that you do not know the things they have a right to expect you to know. It is your job to inform yourself fully about the goods you sell. You ought to keep studying about them. The general public does not pretend to know about drugs. It pays you a profit on them for the knowledge you are supposed to possess. The fact that you are a retail clerk and not engaged in the manufacture of the goods you sell may be one reason for your ignorance about them, but it is not an excuse. The only real explanation is lack of ambition to know, to equip yourself mentally for your job. You may be ignorant of everything about the business when you start in, but blame attaches only to those who remain ignorant. You owe it to your- self and to anyone dependent upon you to inform yourself as fast as you can. There is only one way you can convey the im- 193 Getting More Drug Store Business pression that you are informed and that is to be informed, actually to know what you pretend to know. You cannot make any success of bluffing, because bluffs mean mistakes, and mistakes behind the counter in the drug store are something more than mere opportunities for a little pecuniary loss. Mistakes mean a loss of customers at the very least. They may mean lives lost. You cannot know everything, no matter how hard you study, but you can keep learning and reducing the number of things you do not know. And instead of saying H I don't know " in reply to the customer's query, you can at least reply, " I'll find out." The latter answer leaves a better impression and in the end it gives more satisfaction. Part of your job is selling goods, but that is not all of it. The part that has the most bearing on your future, and a part that will make a success or a failure of your efforts to sell goods, is the learning part, the part that is constant work to eliminate the need for any of that "I don't know " talk. 194 A CATECHISM FOR DRUGGISTS Q. What is a druggist ? A. A druggist is a man who can pour a liquid from one bottle into another without spilling it. Q. What excuse is there for his existence? A. The excuses for his existence are three in number: (i) The telephone; (2) the directory; (3) the postage-stamp. Q. Has the druggist any friends ? A. His friends, until the day comes for collecting his accounts, are as the sands of the seashore. Q. Is one hundred per cent the average profit on the sales in a drug store ? A. One hundred per cent is regarded as the min- imum profit (by the public). Q. Is the druggist a professional man ? A. He is a professional man in the matter of education, preparation, and fitness, but an odd job man in the matter of fees. Q. Are druggists fond of recreation ? A. The druggist finds great sport in pill-tile golf and mortar polo. Q. What are the literary attainments of the druggist ? A. He is a frequent contributor to the powder paper, and his writings are often found on medical works. Q. Does the druggist see better by artificial light ? 195 Getting More Drug Store Business A. No, but he sees longer. Daylight is more particularly for people. Q. Is the druggist a great convenience to the physician ? A. Yes, someone has to be the goat. Q. Who is the druggist's goat? A. He has no goat. The department stores and chain stores have got his. Q. What would happen if a druggist should stop work when the whistle blows ? A. Tomorrow he would have two new compet- itors. Q. What is Pharmacy ? A. Pharmacy is the drug business raised to the nth power. Q. What is the druggist's favorite fad? A. The soda fountain. Q. How does a druggist recognize his intimate acquaintances ? A. They address him as " Opodeldoc," " Pepper- mint," "Pills," or "Squills." Q. How does he recognize the man who is after liis money ? A. He addresses him as " Doctor." Q. Is there any hope for the druggist? A. Yes, there is plenty of that. 196 Making a Drug Store Pay FARRIKGTOU How Frank Farrington built up his drug store busi- ness until it paid a profit of 17% on gross sales year after year. The facts, the figures, the identical sell- ing schemes and advertisements he used, with a full account of how they worked. There are 229 advertisements, showing actual set- ting of type; circular letters that pulled trade from other stores ; the text of booklets and pamphlets, that kept the stock moving ; hundreds of selling schemes used in pushing cigars, candy, rubber goods, station- ery, toilet articles, prescriptions ; etc., etc. He tells his experience with the soda water trade and how he made the business profitable. His success with pre- miums is fully described. There are eighteen full chapters of business getting information of this kind. A druggist in Texas writes, " I have not read all the book yet, but it is worth five times the price and then some. 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