92 
THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
it provides a place to sell profitably those stocks that ought 
not to be sold upstairs—extraordinary odd lots which can 
be bought at extraordinarily low prices and which, under the 
present methods, will constantly be a temptation to the 
buyer to buy for the full lines. 
It is most profitable to a store to be open to buy at times 
when there is a scarcity of buyers in the producing markets, 
which also is a strong reason why it pays to take basement 
automatic mark-down early. For instance, some years 
ago a big blizzard made access to the stores, especially for 
people from out of town, so difficult as to reduce greatly the 
number of customers and sales. This meant also a large 
increase in mark-downs and losses in our basement store. 
But the basement store more than made good these losses 
by being open to buy when there was a scarcity of other 
stores buying in the market. 
The storm reduced sales to consumers. This mn turn 
reduced buying from wholesalers and manufacturers. They 
were faced with the possibility that they might not sell out 
their stocks before the season was over, hence they made 
important reductions. 
These conditions which tended to break prices in the 
market could have been taken advantage of by the Filene 
upstairs store and by other stores, just as well as by the 
automatic bargain basement. The difference was that the 
basement store was forced to take the mark-downs, while 
in the main store and in all stores doing a “regular” business 
there was no such great compulsion and the mark-downs 
and losses were not taken soon enough. They had to be 
taken later on, at a time when the pressure of overstocked 
manufacturers brought into competitors’ stores at much 
lower prices duplicates of the goods that they had not yet 
sold. 
So this simple basement principle has in it a really scientific 
method of adjusting retail selling to supply and to the time 
of buying bargains most profitable to the retailer and his 
customer. Actually, there are times when very few buyers 
in the country are open to buy merchandise.