150 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
in a European country. He purposed to employ for these 
European stores head buyers trained and highly experienced 
in fixed-price chain-store merchandising. The European 
merchant pointed out that American buyers could not 
possibly know what the European customers like nor could 
they know the best buying opportunities among European 
resources. 
Right here the American chain-store operator countered 
with a fact that has come to him from long, profitable 
experience: 
I would rather have buyers who know best how to buy to a single 
fixed price than have buyers who know all the ins and outs of local 
consumer preferences and local producers. No other quality in a 
buyer will make as great profits for the store in the direct sales, and, 
in the long run, more and more profits from greater goodwill, as know- 
ing that he has just one fixed price at which he must sell, and for which, 
consequently, he must buy within a definite range of cost. 
The buyer who already knows this basic fact from experience can 
easily enough find out from his sales results and from native assistants 
what customers like and dislike. With his purchasing power, he can 
safely depend on most of the worthwhile suppliers finding him and 
bringing their samples. But if a buyer does not know how to buy for a 
single price, the handicap on us would be too great. 
Of course the simplest and best way and the one that we shall 
finally work out here is to have native buyers. But until we can train 
native buyers who will be both willing and able to use this better 
method, we can only afford to have our buying done by trained, 
experienced Americans who are trained to the best use of this strongest 
and most successful method of buying to a fixed price. 
As between a buyer who knows the local problems and a buyer who 
knows buying to a single price, I'll take the experienced fixed-price 
buyer every time, in any market, and under any conceivable conditions. 
Most retail stores, even good-sized department stores in 
the smaller cities, cannot subdivide their buying to the point 
where one buyer or an assistant buyer can have charge of 
just one full line. But larger stores can reach this high degree 
of specialization; in fact, there is a notable trend in this 
direction. 
The buyer who is concerned only with one item or with one 
line of goods to sell at a single price has, as the chains have 
already demonstrated, an immeasurable advantage over com-