OUR HOLIDAY SELLING CAMPAIGN

December is the month during which we turn up a volume of business surpassing that transacted in any other three months of the year. The desire to buy is abroad in the community, and by the display of the right kind of Christmas merchandise we attract many new faces to the store; and a number of these persons always become permanent customers.

We begin planning in May and June for the coming holiday season, and it is in these months that we place the bulk of our orders for September and October delivery. Files are kept of all merchandise ordered so that we may know what we have coming and thus be kept from doubling up on any numbers. We start to rearrange our stock the last of September, and by the first of November everything is in readiness for the big holiday drive.

It is with this rush in mind that we make of the summer months a merchandise tryout period during which we are able to judge by their selling qualities what numbers are likely to go the best in December, and so judge our order additions. Throughout the year we carry lines of all things featured at Christmas, but we do not go into them so extensively, nor are we able to show them so effectively, because of the fact that our display space is given over to seasonable articles.

Our Christmas merchandise is grouped under the following heads: Silver; Leather; Ivory; Perfumes; Candy; and General Merchandise. Under these captions I will attempt to explain how each department has been made successful.

OUR SILVER LINE.

Sterling silver has been the nucleus around which we have built our fancy goods business, and though in some years it is superseded in popularity by other lines, it is always worthy of two display cases and one or more window displays.

We carry a complete line of toilet silverware, ten patterns in all, with about twenty items in each pattern. All pieces are bought separately, after which we make up sets of three, five,

By FRANCIS FRAWLEY,

Bangor, Maine eleven, and even up to twenty pieces in a case. The big feature of this line to the buying public is that the customer is able to match at any time the pattern he is collecting. This serves as an incentive for further purchases at other times of the year, such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

A pattern is "big" with us for three years, but after that we stock just enough to carry us along, depending on quick mail facilities from the factory to fill unexpected or large orders.

The first year of a pattern we play it up strongly and usually get enough people collecting it to pay us for stocking it thereafter.

We price silverware as we do all fancy goods, at a much lower mark-up than is usually observed. The line we carry is featured in a number of the mail-order jewelry catalogues, and to settle any question of price that the customer may bring up we always keep at hand price lists from the catalogue houses.

With this line we also stock silver frames, which are invariably big sellers; enameled novelties; tableware in novel styles; and other little knickknacks that look good.

LEATHER GOODS.

Leather goods is a hard line of merchandise to handle because of the continually changing styles, numerous types of finish, and overabundance of novelties.

We particularly feature such novelties as motor-trip books, desk sets, and jewel casesanything, in fact, that happens to be new or distinctive. Traveling cases are really the only staple we stock, and observation shows that the better class of cases for women are selling as well as men's cases.

Before the war we had standing import orders with German and Austrian houses for those novelties that gained them such a foothold in America; but now we are having no trouble filling the gap with goods of American manufacture.

A sales plan we play up successfully with some of the higher-priced goods in our line is

perhaps worthy of notice. During the fall months we look through such magazines as Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper's Bazaar, often seeing pictured in them articles that we have in stock and which are emphasized as the "correct thing" in New York. By bringing a marked copy of one of these magazines to the attention of a prospect, it many times has the psychological effect of raising such merchandise to a higher plane in his—or usually her— mind, and tends to make the customer see that this is that ultra-distinctive thing he or she is looking for.

Of the higher grades of cases, desk sets, etc., we carry only one of a kind in stock. This fact appeals to those who are seeking the exclusive.

Besides these higher-priced numbers, we sell quantities of popular-priced articles, such as shine kits, folding shoe horns, coat hangers, drinking cups, etc.

Our leather department has six cases with lift-up tops, and the customers are allowed to browse among the stock without hindrance. Very often they find what they want themselves, and have the pleasure of viewing the new things without any interference from the salespeople. In this way, also, they frequently become interested in an article and come back later on to make a purchase.

IVORY STAPLES AND NOVELTIES.

Ivory (or, as it is sometimes called, Parisian or Persian ivory) is just now the biggest selling line we have, and we have been very successful with it. It is an attractive line to handle, as it is very diversified in quality and number of items, and also because the various items are particularly adaptable for display purposes.

We use two 14-foot show-cases and one 16foot wall-case for display, and have none too much room. Our stock is large, but by having so many styles and prices we are able to satisfy almost any pocketbook.

Mirrors, brushes, and combs are, of course, the backbone of the line. We carry about fifty styles in mirrors and brushes, and as an appropriate number in other pieces as the divergence of the selling price allows. We have sets of three, five and eleven pieces made up, and sometimes when they are too highpriced, the clerk by a little tact can make up a set on a low-priced tray that appeals to the

customer. We also make up little combinations for window display at $1.00, $1.50, and $2.00. These will often sell in place of a single piece.

In this department the main talking point is the low price we offer in comparison to the high type of merchandise. This line, properly worked, has been the greatest advertisement our Fancy Goods Department has ever received because it is the most satisfactory and universally liked class of toilet accessories on the market to-day.

PERFUMES, IMPORTED AND DOMESTIC.

Perfumes, I imagine, still constitute the main Christmas department of many drug stores. And even though the "good old days," when anything put up in a fancy package would sell, are now on the wane, perfumes are still big factors in the business.

Before explaining some of the Christmas. features of this department I will say that we stock about 100 bulk perfumes; about 50 sachets in 2-ounce and 1-ounce packages, and in bulk; about 125 different toilet waters; and about 150 talcum powders. Our Christmas stock is built around this representative showing.

We have always specialized in imported goods, which we order in the spring in large enough quantities to enjoy the discounts. In addition, we feature the most successful odors of American manufacture-those which offer us satisfactory profits and price protection.

We do very little with special holiday packages, judging by observation that people now buy perfumes more by reputation and quality and less by the appeal of a Christmas box. At this time of year we sell great quantities of bulk sachet powder and lavender flowers for fancy work. The higher grades of talcum are also good and we feature a large assortment, ranging in price from fifty cents to one dollar. Toilet waters and perfume atomizers are likewise in demand and very often they can be sold with perfume sales, thus swelling the total.

We have worked up a tremendous business in smelling salts, or bedroom bottles, offering packages of our own manufacture, retailing from 25 cents up to $5.00, in innumerable shapes and sizes and in seven colors. They have been a potent factor in bringing us big business. We purchase ammonium carbonate by the barrel, use the best perfume oils obtain

able, and employ only fast colors; so it is not surprising that we ship the bottles all over the country during the holiday season.

Our perfume department is successful as a Christmas gift field because of the reliability of its products, and because of the fact that perfume appeals to the harassed shopper as being always in good form.

CANDY AND GENERAL MERCHANDISE.

We do not specialize very heavily on Christmas candies, contenting ourselves by playing up the regular packages more strongly and by offering a more diversified box selection than at other times. We stock no fancy packages on which the purchaser pays a whole lot for the package and very little for the candy, but prefer to stand behind our selection of about 50 different packages as the best products of three different lines.

This makes our line of candy, in a way, a staple stock proposition, and only our special services are worthy of note. We offer by means of display cards, etc., to do up all packages for mailing with Christmas cards enclosed; and we also offer to deliver boxes of candy to any part of the city on Christmas morning. These little service helps meet with a ready response from the tired shopper.

When we find we can't satisfy a customer in any of the departments mentioned, as druggists we revert to our regular stock, which is the source of many acceptable suggestions. It is really surprising to note how many hotwater bottles we dispose of to be used as gifts for the sick friend or for Grandma; we sell more of the higher-priced nickeled ones during Christmas week than we do in all the rest of the year combined.

Vacuum bottles and cases, fancy shaving sets, safety razors, structural toys for children, alcohol stoves-in short, articles from every department of the modern drug store can help to make "The Day" happy for some one.

WINDOW AND CARD WORK.

We run the Christmas window on a sort of schedule; that is, we plan in advance what the show cards and displays will be for the two months preceding the holidays. As we are decidedly cramped by having only one large window, it requires some figuring to say all we want to say on the display cards and to give our varied stock a good showing.

We usually play drugs, or rubber goods and medicines, for the first two weeks in November, so that our identity as druggists will not be lost. The third week it is advance Christmas showings, with cards calling attention to the newer things; references to our lower prices when compared with mail-order catalogue quotations; short slogans on the wide assortment and diversity of our stock, the dependability of our merchandise and the assurance that any piece can be duplicated or matched at any time; and finally, we use the plea for early Christmas shopping.

Thanksgiving week this display gives way to a candy window, trimmed with reference to the day. This comes out Thanksgiving night, and then the big drive begins in earnest, as the real holiday shopping season is supposed to start the following Saturday. We find, however, that buying can be stimulated two weeks earlier, so we have the store ready for it by the middle of November.

We use price tickets extensively in the window and find them to give splendid returns. For display cards we use air-brushed ones in accordance with the season, displaying them at the fountain and in all parts of the store.

The Christmas window is changed in part every night during the final three weeks and slow-moving goods forced, or something that is selling beyond expectations taken out. Hundreds of sales are made directly from the window as a result of the price tickets. We have found it a good plan to have a clerk near the door ready to answer questions regarding prices and assortments, for many people-especially young men are rather timid when it comes to choosing Christmas purchases.

The good-will of a drug store in a small city thrives only in proportion to the number of satisfied customers it has, and for that reason everything we offer at Christmas is sold with the understanding that it may be exchanged or returned. We are called upon to make an adjustment after Christmas on but a very small portion of a per cent of our sales. We try to make our Christmas merchandise as dependable and as high grade as possible, and the fact that people recognize it to be a part of our regular stock breeds confidence in the store.

Christmas lines have been revolutionized in the last few years, and in place of the foolish and trashy goods of days gone by it is now the more sensible and practical gifts that appeal.

No doubt every drug student has dreams, when he first enters college, of the day when he will be the proud possessor of a pharmacy of his own. But where is the student who ever dreamt of owning a Montana wheat farm?

I, at least, didn't have the latter conception of what might some day come to pass. I have one, though, and it is under cultivation.

One day (I was in a store then, clerking) a friend asked me if I didn't want to make a trip with him to look over some land. I had the right kind of boss, and he let me go.

To Central Montana; that was the place. I went only as a companion and as a sightseer,

An abundance of sky.

I thought. But I soon opened my eyes wide and began to do a little thinking.

The result was that when we returned home we had signed up for a piece of land that would take all the earnings I could possibly save from my drug-store job in the next five years to keep the payments going; and many a show and other entertainment have I missed because of that piece of real estate. Some meals have been even rather abbreviated, too-perhaps to the good of my stomach.

In order that we be not classed as land sharks, just buying because we believed the land was going to increase in value and selling as soon as it did, we set about making it more valuable by making two green things grow where there had been one, or less. We hired

By H. D. MOSS, Norfolk, Nebraska

a large portion plowed and rented it to crop, wheat being the proper thing in that part of the country then as well as now.

LETTING GEORGE DO IT.

it, paying us a portion of what he raised for For two years we let the other fellow work the use of the land. This gave us time to learn how to farm, and to learn whether it would really be profitable or not.

To our entire satisfaction, the venture proved a winner both years; so at the beginning of the present season we decided to try farming it ourselves.

On the second day of June, 1916, therefore, I took the first train from Norfolk, Nebraska, to Billings, Montana, with the idea of investing in a tractor of some kind and tackling the farming proposition in dead earnest. I intended to invest in one of the small machines, like they are successfully using down East, and was firmly convinced that we were going to show those Western fellows something about economy in tilling the soil.

I got somewhat of a setback, however, when I met the manager of one of the big tractor companies at Billings and he told me we didn't I want the little fellow at all, and couldn't get it, even if we did. He pointed out that the mountain soil was too hard for the small machines of the East, and that the expense of operation would be too great, since it would take just as many men to run a little machine as a big one.

He took me out into the country to see one of those giant tractors at work, and there we found two men plowing twenty-five acres a day, for which they received $4.50 an acre.

It all looked pretty good to me, so, after consulting with an old friend who told me I couldn't lose if I chose a good machine, I told the foreman to oil up a tractor so we could get onto the road with it.

After having slept on the proposition that night, however, I felt so shaky about the job that next morning I went to the manager and asked him how much I owed him to call it all off and settle up right where we were.

I DECIDED TO GO ON.

If ever a big Irishman got busy, that manager certainly did at that time. He told me that I just had a bad case of cold feet, and that it would soon pass over if I only kept a stiff In fact, he came so near calling upper lip. me a coward that I decided to stay in the fight.

The modern way.

We spent the morning getting tent and grub stake for three persons, and on June 6 we pulled out for Billings with the outfit, weighing in the aggregate 27,000 pounds, booked for a trip over the mountains of nearly one hundred miles.

Being an internal combustion engine, our machine needed lots of babying for the first few days, until all bearings were sure of getting proper lubrication. At the end of the first run of six and one-half hours we found ourselves twenty-three miles from town and everything in good shape; and at the end of three and one-half days were on the farm, ready for business.

It was all uneventful to the man at the wheel, but for the fellow used to waiting on the people in the store the trip was full of novelty. To go puffing along over the rocky mountainous roads and see the cattle, sheep, and horses, to say nothing of the numerous wild animals, take note of this strange thing passing before them was interesting indeed.

A HAIR-RAISING EXPERIENCE.

The numerous culverts and little bridges taxed our nerves, but we passed over them without doing any damage, either to them or to the machine.

The only real hair-raising incident of the trip was when we were getting near the top of the Bull Mountains. We were making a

long, hard pull, climbing a very steep incline of something over a half-mile, when we saw coming toward us a large touring car, such as you seldom see, except in the cities and mountainous countries.

The machine was coming at a high rate of speed, which was quite natural, as they "go some" out there; but we had no idea that it would try to pass us at such a gait.

Whether their brakes wouldn't hold or whether their behavior was due to reckless driving I do not know; they came on at full speed, missing the engine by a hair, and coming to a stop only by running onto a ridge which raised the machine clear off its wheels.

The five occupants were still in the car, save one man, who jumped a few rods back, rolling down the mountainside in the dust, preferring a chance like that to being bumped into a mass of steel the size of our tractor at forty miles an hour. The lack of color in the other faces showed the wisdom of getting out early, as he had done. I wouldn't have given much for their chance of life for just a few moments.

RATTLERS AND NIGHT SOUNDS.

This incident added excitement to the trip, which otherwise we found to be rather grueling, especially to one unused to physical labor.