THE MORE-PROFIT TIME TO SELL 127 
customers’ judgment on them before our competitors have 
found out the same thing and placed their orders, with the 
consequence that manufacturers have become busy and 
desirable goods and materials have become scarce. The 
date, therefore, should be early, but not so early that it fails 
to accomplish its purpose effectively. In other words, the 
quicker we can get a new style or a new kind of goods to our 
customers and the more we can outdo competitors in the 
first showing the better off we are. If there are any limita- 
tions to that, they are exceptions which prove the rule. 
But—and this is important—we should not be tempted 
into making too much of our first-showing advertising before 
we are really ready with merchandise to fill calls and before 
our customers are ready in sufficient numbers to buy. If 
we disappoint people and rouse their expectations without 
being able to satisfy them, we shall lose sales at the time, and 
many of these people may lose faith in us and not come back. 
To review the process of building up a complete stock by 
this plan, we go into the market and choose the best samples 
we can; put yellow tickets on one piece of each lot in order 
that when the time for ordering in quantity arrives, we may 
have at our service the judgment of our customers on our 
preliminary purchases; reorder in small quantities those items 
for which customers have placed some orders; and later 
reorder in larger quantities the more popular pieces. Thus, 
gradually, we come in a systematic way to have a complete 
stock based not on guesses but on what customers have shown 
they want. This is the stock which will sell most profitably. 
Now, if we always had three months or so to devote to this 
work before we came to the time of largest demand, we could 
do it all fairly easily. However, at best the time between 
the different dates on the selling calendar is very short. 
One of the difficult problems is the necessity for acting 
decisively and yet correctly in so short a time. We must 
work quickly. 
It is to our interest. as far as the approaching season is 
concerned, to have our first showing date as early as possible. 
But we must time it nicely. It must not come so early that