Over 3400 sales were made to customers who attended the spring opening held at the store of Hunter & McGee, at Jackson, Mississippi, on March 21 and 22.

The rapid growth of the firm's business during the last few years necessitated the se

J. Clyde McGee.

curing of larger quarters, but as the store had been on Jackson's best known corner for about thirty years it was deemed inadvisable to seek a new location. Accordingly the firm had the original quarters enlarged and remodeled, and the opening commemorated the establishment of one of the most attractive and commodious stores in the State of Mississippi.

The formal opening was attended by many enjoyable features. Excellent music was rendered at intervals during the two-day period and attractive souvenirs were distributed to patrons and all other visitors.

Grape juice, coffee, cakes, and other sodafountain specialties were served to all comers. Women visitors were treated to miniature boxes of confectionery and samples of various toilet articles featured by the store. More than 900 cigars and packages of cigarettes were distributed to smokers. A plentiful supply of attractive souvenirs for the children was also on hand, and the gifts were distributed liberally.

During the opening there were also offered special inducements to visitors who made purchases. For the women customers a liberal

size jar of toilet cream was given with each 25-cent purchase. A 50-purchase by a man entitled him to a dependable safety razor, free of charge.

A feature of the newly remodeled store is the prescription department, in which four registered pharmacists are kept constantly busy. It is claimed that Hunter & McGee dispense more prescriptions than any other firm in the State. The prescription department furnishes medicines and supplies for several of the hospitals in Jackson and also contracts to furnish drugs to the various railway lines entering the city.

During the past two years Hunter & McGee have met with considerable success in the wholesale line, having an extensive jobbing trade throughout their territory, and supplying scores of drug stores and physicians in near-by towns with drugs, chemicals, biological products, and the like. Dental supplies are carried, many dentists buying their supplies from the firm.

A beautiful soda fountain, under the management of a veteran in the confectioner's

trade, greatly enhances the popularity of the establishment. Mineral waters are featured especially, orders for them being placed in carload lots. An entire building is used for their storage.

The store delivery system is in operation at all hours of the day and night. Four messengers are employed, and within a few minutes after an order is filled a boy is on his way as fast as a motorcycle can take him to the waiting customer.

The firm of Hunter & McGee is the oldest drug concern in the city of Jackson, having been established about thirty years ago by Dr. John F. Hunter, one of Mississippi's foremost physicians, who has since been its senior member.

Associated with Dr. Hunter as junior partner and manager is J. Clyde McGee, who is widely known to both the wholesale and retail trade throughout the State, and who is deservedly popular in both business and social circles. Mr. McGee served as president of the Mississippi Pharmaceutical Association a year or two ago.

far as possible, with related lines near each other, thus making it easier for clerks to serve trade, and making the store more attractive to customers.

"Staple stocks which the public knows are carried in drug stores are kept to the rear, and the novelty and specialty lines are placed in the front where they will be seen by all the transients who enter the store.

"No one ever comes in to have a physician's prescription filled because he sees on the front shelf a beautifully inscribed bottle labeled, 'Hydrarg. Chlor. Mit.' However, he does pick up some little novelty from the front counter, and buys it simply because he chances to see it. This is sufficient reason to warrant our front space for the display of attractive merchandise.

"REPEAT” BUSINESS.

"Another thing which we try to do is to secure the agency for specialty lines which have a good-sized initial sale, and which bring in repeat business. Among these may be mentioned cameras, the primary sale being but a forerunner of many visits for supplies. Phonographs, too, with the subsequent demand for records, have proved excellent for our trade. Another line which is getting better all the time is the small pocket flash-lamp, which repeatedly brings the purchaser back for batteries and bulbs."

In my second paragraph I mentioned the mail-order house as one of the forms of big competition which I have tried to meet. The mail-order house is doubtless the biggest competitor the average-sized retail merchant has. Personally, we have tried to beat it at its own game-by using the mailing list.

Take a mail-order catalogue and look it

over.

See how they have some particular thing to say about every item they advertise. Apply that method to your own advertising.

AN IMPORTANT FACTOR.

Don't try to advertise everything under the

patron to come in and see that particular article for himself before he buys it. You will have the mail-order house beat a thousand miles or more, for you are right on the ground! Last but not least, I come to the idea of personality for the small store.

By store personality I do not mean that the atmosphere of the store should be the personality of the proprietor himself. It should be the composite personality of the entire working force, with the best qualities of each and every man making up the character of its service.

To accomplish this, here in our store, we hold regular clerks' meetings after the store is closed and when we will not be disturbed. In these meetings the junior clerk has just as much to say as I have, and he is encouraged to criticize me as much as he does his fellow clerks.

In these meetings we discuss the good things we ought to adopt in giving service, and we decide on the things which should be eliminated. We bring up good selling talks for different articles, and each man adopts the same arguments, so that the entire sales force works in unison.

EFFICIENT TEAM WORK.

There are five of us, and I am proud of the fact that my customers do not seem to have "pets" with whom they wish to trade. This is evidence to me that every man is rendering a similar service; in other words, that he is contributing to the personality of our store.

I don't feel that I have given our store a personality. Instead, I feel that its personality is, in a measure, imparted to me. If I only had one clerk I should have clerks' meetings; and even if I were working alone I would occasionally get off by myself and think out some of these things that we discuss in our meetings.

After all, it seems easy to me to meet big competition. It isn't difficult to copy methods which have already proved successful; and the personal contact that the smaller merchant has with his customers gives him a big advantage over those establishments which by virtue of their very magnitude must necessarily lose out in this particular.

BY FEATURING THE DRUG END OF THE BUSINESS.

BY JOHN P. FRAWLEY, BANGOR, MAINE.* In attempting to solve the problem embodied in this proposition, I should first ask the privilege of substituting the words "compete with" for "meet," thus making the question under discussion read "How to Compete with Big Competition." For a small dealer-i.e., a druggist in a city of say from 20,000 to 40,000 people-hasn't one chance in a million of meeting big competition and making a success of it. In the first place, he hasn't the capital; secondly, and far more important, he is unfamiliar with "big" methods of doing business.

A successful druggist certainly must have some drug business-legitimate, straight drug business, I mean; and I have been reliably informed that one of the managers of a great drug-chain system made the statement, and with emphasis, that only 10 per cent of the volume of trade secured by the cutter (socalled) is done with proprietaries, "patent," and toilet. So a man with a reliable drug business has his fight nine-tenths won, provided he can keep big competition from taking it away from him.

FIRST LEARN HOW IT IS DONE.

In my opinion, the first thing for a man of this kind to do is to soak up all he can of the methods used by chain stores, etc.-methods which the business world of to-day recognizes as modern "efficiency."

A druggist should not adopt these methods, though, with the idea that he is going to divorce himself from such methods as he has employed in the past and with good results. Rather should he tack them on as a side-line in the management of his business.

If he has a customer who wants to talk cut, he should be conversant with the line of conversation employed in that kind of merchandizing; and if the customer is one of his regulars, he should be prepared to be to him or her the same chivalrous merchant that has made him a reliable and acceptable pharmacist. I do not mean to imply that he must treat customers differently, because that would never do; but he will find some who will almost insist on making prices for him, and those are the ones he must convert from the thought that he is trying to rob them.

*Mr. Frawley wins the second prize of $10.

Now this means that he will have to meet Big Competition on at least 10 per cent of his sales. He should meet this competition; but under no circumstances should he try to undersell it, because this has been proven the most abject folly in many instances.

We have now decided that the druggist must cut on 10 per cent of his sales, mostly proprietaries. On the remaining 90 per cent, which represents real drug business, he is going to fortify in some way to prevent the enemy from effecting its capture.

How can he do this?

INTERESTING THE PUBLIC.

I want to talk now to the man who likes to have a customer inquire for herbs, chemicals, essences, tinctures, and all those old familiar drug-store items that we learned to like and liked to learn about when we were boys in the business. That's the fellow who will appreciate the idea I am about to advance and put it in practice, with the result that the people will still retain the thought that his is a real drug store, and when they want drugs, they will walk blocks to trade with him.

What is it that always will attract and hold the attention of the public? Why, something that they are seldom privileged to see. And where will you find anything more curious than crude drugs?

Turn to your jobber. Buy a bundle of chiretta root, some agar-agar, a bundle of Honduras sarsaparilla, some Peruvian bark in long pieces, some nux vomica beans, some Iceland moss, Irish moss, and Malva flowers, some glass wool, and some Saint John's bread; buy some jequirity berries, cascara bark (whole), dragon's-blood, Job's tears, areca nuts, orange apple, Japan wax, Penghawar djambi, dandelion root (whole), bitter apple, henna leaves, garlic, aconite tubers, skunk cabbage, sumbul root, senna pods, argols, etc. Buy all this, and some other items, possibly, which may be thought interesting or attractive; with a few exceptions, they are all low in price. At this particular time some of them may be scarce and high, but these may be eliminated.

OTHER ITEMS.

Then go through your store and pick out benzoin, vanilla beans, red rose leaves, acacia, such drugs as elm bark, licorice root, gum tragacanth, Ceylon cinnamon, diamond dust, spermaceti, cocoa butter, etc.