28 
THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
missible buying cost. Thus we should materially weaken 
the highest-priced full line. 
The basic rule to be applied to the de luxe departments, 
therefore, is that every de luxe department will be organized 
and treated as if it were a separate de luxe shop on a different 
street. It will be under the sole control of the buyer or head 
of the department, who should be selected, if possible, because 
he or she has successfully run a de luxe specialty shop and 
has a big reputation in our city. 
Of course, to obtain a successful shop owner to head our 
de luxe department, we shall, usually, have to offer him a 
guaranteed income that will be at least equal to his net 
average profits during the past two or three years. The 
ultimate basis of compensation for this head of a de luxe 
department must be a substantial share of the profits from 
the department that he heads in our store. If he and we 
work together as well as we should, his earnings from working 
in our organization should soon be materially greater than 
he could have made on his own account. 
By this very method of compensation we attain our best 
control over the de luxe department. For it assures us that 
profit will always be kept in mind, and, at the same time, 
it permits the de luxe buyer to have a business that he can 
operate much as he did his own shop, by self-interest. 
It will not be difficult to get a successful owner of an inde- 
pendent shop to come and take such a department in a big 
store if he is, moreover, assured that he is free from the 
general rules of the store and will be as free as he has been 
in his own shop. Actually, we can assure him still greater 
freedom than he ever had before; we absorb into our own 
large organization and thus relieve him of all problems of 
finances, credits and collections, bookkeeping, and other 
routine details for which he is not temperamentally best 
fitted. We have an efficient routine built up to take care of 
these requirements for our whole big store. So we are able 
to leave this de luxe style expert far more time and energy 
than he has ever had before for the actual selection and sale 
of his goods.