DE LUXE GOODS FOR DE LUXE CUSTOMERS 71 
2. An opportunity to increase largely the volume of sales 
because the highest-priced full line will constantly draw in 
customers who have also been buying in de luxe specialty 
shops, and who will now frequently buy in the de luxe 
departments. 
3- Individuality of the department head maintained and 
more frequent trips to foreign markets made possible by 
relief from the inescapable details of small-store routine and 
financing, which the best type of de luxe buyer is least fitted 
to handle. 
4- All buying by a style genius, assuring best styles and 
an ensemble effect throughout the department. 
5. Greater buying power with style originators, because 
of the importance of the store of which the department is a 
part. 
6. Year-round representation in foreign markets. 
There is a reasonable basis in the de luxe customer’s 
demand for goods exclusive to herself. But even more than 
by its appeal of exclusiveness, the small specialty shop gains 
its real success because it is founded on taste and a genius 
for style. When a new style or a new trend appears—as 
we have seen in recent years, for instance, in the growth of 
applied art in all kinds of design—it is picked up first by 
these alert style geniuses of the small shops. Their cus- 
tomers, the style leaders of the community, buy these brand- 
new goods. Other people see them in the style leaders’ 
Possession; the style spreads down through the income levels 
below the top. 
Contrast the department head in a large store not operated 
by the Model Stock Plan. He knows that his chief profits 
are made on the mass-selling lines, and he must necessarily 
give most of his timé to their purchase and sale. Very often 
he knows a great deal about de luxe goods and de luxe styles. 
But in handling such goods he is in competition with the spe- 
cialty shop owner who is concerned only with and whose 
profits depend only on de luxe goods. And instead of the 
temperament typical of the successful de luxe shop owners, 
the best full-line buyer has the cool business judgment that