AN ENTIRE STOCK OF BARGAINS 155 
type of man or woman who functions most successfully 
and earns the greatest total profits for the department and 
the greatest income personally under this plan is distinctly 
not the genius type of buyer.! 
As it is used in this book, the world “genius” is taken to 
mean a buyer whose chief strength is his special equipment 
of knowledge of style and applied art. For this very reason 
he is generally not best equipped to work in a systematic 
way to sell goods in very large quantities. 
The Model Stock Plan requires, for its most profitable 
operation, an orderly, scientific approach. This indicates 
an intelligent, fact-finding individual with at least a reason- 
able knowledge of merchandise. Such an individual, making 
full use of all the methods of the plan, can hardly fail to 
attain results that bring in far greater total profits than were 
ever possible under the old methods. 
That the essentially fact basis of the Model Stock Plan 
does not preclude some guessing on novelties and new styles 
must be apparent from the description in a previous chapter? 
of the way in which we employ the selling calendar in buying 
our very first style goods for a new season and to a somewhat 
less extent in placing our first, small-quantity reorders. 
The buyer in our store probably buys a small quantity of any 
style or novelty goods that appeal to him as desirable for 
the department. This buying is done in about the same 
spirit as a rifleman’s “sighting shots” before he actually 
begins firing to hit the bull’s-eye. 
We must, of course, understand that the best place to plan 
the buying and to make out in detail the lists of what to buy 
is in our store. All buying elsewhere should be largely a 
matter of getting the best values to fill orders previously made 
up in the department by the department head, who will make 
the greatest total profits if he is primarily a seller. In the 
store we can analyze our plans in comparison with our stocks 
1 We have seen in Chap. V that the buyer whois a genius has, however, a 
definite place in the Model Stock store as head of a de luxe department, 
probably where style is most strongly intrenched. 
2 Chapter IX, p. 121.