162 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
customers will not find in the highest-priced full line. The 
impulse that starts at the top with the de luxe buyer eventu- 
ally works all the way down to the basement store. Is 
it any wonder that a store like this can honestly advertise 
that it has an entire stock of bargains? 
No data are sufficient, on the present meager experience, 
to predict how immense will be these advantages to the store. 
But it is perfectly possible to foretell major advantages to 
the men and women who, before this plan is put to work, are 
buyers for the whole department.! Many of them, under 
this arrangement, will become division merchandise managers 
supervising the buyers in charge of each of the three full 
lines. And of course, in this position, the former department 
buyer will encourage the competition between his subdepart- 
ments. Any interference with this inside competition, such 
as trying to limit one full-line buyer from getting the very 
best in values regardless of how effectively they compete 
with the line next above his own, would be suicidal to the 
effectiveness of the plan. 
The Model Stock Plan, simply but definitely carried out in 
a large store; brings into each department this helpful com- 
petition. The result is incomparably better values all 
through the store. 
In fact, I have had definitely in mind the possibility of 
creating a chain of department stores operated on the Model 
Stock Plan throughout. The buying of each class of goods 
constituting a full line at one of the three prices will be in 
the hands of a separate buyer, who will be responsible for 
that department in each and every store of the chain. This 
will, then, be essentially a chain of department stores, every 
department of which is itself part of a chain. It will be 
essentially chains within a chain. And with each of these 
buyers concentrating his energies and ambitions on a single 
1 As we have seen in Chaps. V and VI, buying for the basement store and 
the de luxe departments should not be, in any event, under the control of 
full-line buyers. To permit such a condition would destroy the effectiveness 
and profit possibilities of these sections as separate entities within the Model 
Stock store, as well as diminish the concentration and total profits of the 
three full-line buvers.