THE WAY TO GREATER TOTAL PROFITS 0 
stock of one of his departments. If he has too many lines 
in a department, it is manifestly impossible for him to keep 
an assortment of all sizes and styles in each color. Such 
an assortment would mean a stock so large that any profit 
would be swallowed up in the depreciation of the goods 
through too slow a rate of turnover. Moreover, he would 
not be open to buy the desirable newer styles as fast as they 
are being produced. 
The second essential of goodwill is price—price that is 
both good value and what the customer is willing to pay. 
We shall not increase the goodwill of a store very much if we 
carry no dresses at less than $500 each, no shoes at less than 
$100 a pair, no furniture at less than $1,000. We must have 
prices that are within the reach of the customers we are 
catering for and that fit their ability to pay. This seems 
so obvious that it should be unnecessary to say it, but 
any examination will show that some of the greatest mistakes 
of business are made along this very line. Prices are most 
often set by tradition, sometimes supported by incomplete 
and fallacious store statistics. A Model Stock is, of course, 
priced scientifically and, when this is properly done, at 
exactly the right levels. 
Perhaps a better name could be found for the Model 
Stock Plan. “Plan,” by its common business usage, rather 
smacks of a system, of a succession of printed forms. The 
Model Stock Plan is truly a set of practical business principles 
that makes more profits for those who use it. 
Where it has been accepted as a set of principles of which 
forms and statistics are merely helpful tools, it has uniformly 
succeeded. In some businesses of sufficiently simple organ- 
ization, the principles have paid huge returns without the 
use of such tools. Ford’s billion-dollar fortune has been 
based on the idea of giving a whole stock of bargains profit- 
ably priced below general competition, a complete line in a 
limited price range. This has required thinking rather than 
systems, for a line of automobiles is simple to merchandise 
in comparison with a department store stock. But where 
anyone has taken the tools of the Model Stock Plan