AN ENTIRE STOCK OF BARGAINS 151
petitors. The specialized buyer, working in this narrowly
limited field, finds himself actually facing greater oppor-
tunities for department profits and personal income than he
ever before had. With all distraction of other prices
removed, he needs to think only about scouring markets and
finding, or causing to be produced, all kinds of articles which
competition has never offered, or, perhaps, never even
thought of as possible at such a price.
For instance, imagine a department store buyer who does
nothing but buy china and porcelain ware to cost not more
than 60 cents and to sell for $1. In a community offering
sufficient opportunity for sales, he can build up a china
department at $1 which will become, by far, more famous
among customers throughout his trade territory than the
so often quoted five- and ten-cent porcelain values of Wool-
worth’s. Porcelain and china manufacturers of this country,
Europe, and the Orient will devote their best ingenuity to
supplying him goods that will fall within his permissible
range of costs. In fact, these manufacturers are already
doing the same thing within the hampering limitations of a
five- and ten-cent retail price range; for a retail price of $1
they could produce, in mass production quantities, values
far beyond anything that has yet been produced.
We know that the principal function of a merchant is to
obtain the goods his customers want at the prices they are
willing to pay. This need the Model Stock Plan fills.
In the intelligent type of buying that this plan leads to, it is
essential to keep in mind a number of considerations. Some
of these are so generally known that they are repeated here
only to set down in one place the whole group of buying
methods that best fit into the Model Stock Plan. While
part of these are almost obvious, others, and these among the
most profitable, are a long way from the traditional methods.
We learned in Chap. IV of a method of recording the
profits that we make from trading with each of our resources.
This set of records is particularly useful when one of our
buyers goes to market. He takes his records with him and
can use them to show each manufacturer or wholesaler
