28 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
the advance goods interfere with selling the goods of the 
current season. Departments differ tremendously as to the 
time of the first showing. No general rule can be given to 
cover the determination of the dates. We shall be greatly 
helped if we have the merchandise to advertise strongly 
early enough to get a bigger early trade than our competitors. 
The second date on the selling calendar is the opening, the 
date when we have built up a stock complete enough to 
meet the demands of the early buying customers attracted 
by our early advertising. 
In our earlier days of merchandising at the Filene store in 
Boston we always used to advertise and emphasize opening 
dates and make a ceremony of them. Most merchants 
did the same. Getting ready for an opening was the greatest 
preparation for a new season. Later, with increased facilities 
for getting goods, with permanent representatives in foreign 
markets, and with far closer contact with domestic markets 
as a result of better transportation and communication 
facilities, the idea has passed of showing at one time about 
all the novelties to be shown for the season. 
Nowadays most merchants aim to show novelties as soon 
as they come out; and they are largely governed by the fear 
that to overemphasize a fixed opening date may make 
customers think it is the first time they have shown any real 
novelties that season, or the first time they are really pre- 
pared with adequate stocks of the new season’s goods. 
They have departed more and more from advertising 
extensively a fixed opening date. For the purpose of our 
merchandising, however, it is well to have a fixed date 
toward which we and our assistants are working to have 
adequate stocks ready, even if we do not advertise it as such. 
The opening comes at a time when our stocks are complete. 
The quantities may be small. Where the Model Stock Plan 
is used, nothing except mere carelessness or bad buying can 
cause so many mark-downs as having too large a stock at the 
opening. We must stick to small quantities. We are still 
in an experimental stage. We have, of course, been trying 
through the period of the first showing to get people to decide