42 
THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
able of itself even though its percentage of mark-up is 
comparatively low. A real BB turns over more rapidly, 
leaving satisfactory dollar profits even if the percentage 
profits should not seem satisfactory. If the MP does not 
sell well, there can be only one conclusion—we have not 
put enough applied science or applied art into it, we have not 
obtained the best MP we could get and should get. 
The mark-up of the BB may have to be kept smaller until 
the full development and a better understanding of the 
Model Stock Plan give us the full power behind the idea. 
By then, we should be getting our BB at a price that yields 
us a full percentage of profit. Our object in having a BB is 
partly to gain goodwill by furnishing our customers the 
best value at the price to be had in our city and partly to 
have the best possible basis of comparison in buying the rest 
of our full line. 
There may be circumstances, however, where for certain 
types of merchandise a BB must of necessity be sold at an 
extremely close profit, due to the type of competition on that 
particular article. In a circumstance of this sort, the 
answer is not in excluding the BB from this type of 
merchandise but rather in planning and developing two or 
perhaps even three MP’s to counteract the effect of one 
extraordinarily low-margin BB. This, of course, does not 
mean an indiscriminate loading of a line with MP’s but rather 
a careful balancing of the BB against the MP’s, consistent with 
good values and a reasonable profit for the entire line. Also, 
of course, it means that it will pay us to put additional 
thought into the rest of the line so as to make all of the lines 
still more effective. If necessary, the BB rate of mark-up 
may be less at the beginning of the season than later. We 
must, however, work away from the idea of considering a 
BB bait to lure the customers into the store.l 
1 Spasmodic bargains to tempt customers by prices that are temporarily 
low are bad business, unethical, unscientific. They teach customers to wait 
for advertised bargains and to deal only with stores when ‘sales’? are 
announced. The BB, on the other hand, educates the customer to realize 
that the store always has bargains; and when it is used for internal store 
comparison, as is explained on p. 46, it serves to make values throughout