HOW TO PLAN AND CONTROL A MODEL STOCK 359
ground here, it is necessary for us—whether we are the owners
of a small store or the management of a large store—to back
up this basic principle by devising methods to assure a sales
volume that will give the maximum total profit. This
means methods that will keep this stock selling rapidly
enough to avoid losses from mark-downs, obsolescence, and
the other ills that slow-moving stocks are heir to.
Some objection may be raised to this at the early stages
of the study of this plan. Such an objection from the man-
agement, however, always disappears with the realization
of how much the total profits can be increased. The Model
Stock Plan
1. Adjusts the stock to the maximum sales.
2. Adjusts buying to large enough quantities to bring the
lowest prices from those from whom purchases are made.
3. Reduces mark-downs and losses by obsolescence.
4. Gives an operating method and a complete stock with
which no competitors who do not use the Model Stock Plan
will be able to compete.
5. Forces the business to operate along lines of mass
distribution which will eventually make profitable even the
departments which at present are non-paying.
Strangely enough, even in many otherwise competently
managed stores, the thinking of management and department
buyers has not been really unified. Here is a field in which
the Model Stock Plan can be of utmost use to the manage-
ment and to the buyer. It performs no miracle. But both
the management and the buyer approach the same problem
of building up the stocks by a definite principle definitely
agreed upon. Many a non-paying department fails to pay
because of one great weakness in management: the arbitrary
determination of the sums set aside for publicity and the
arbitrary assignment of personnel and selling area.
When we start to build up our stock from the Model Stock
Plan, we may temporarily try to operate on too small a
scale, because we have not enough capital to go ahead with
it, or because we are not sure that the necessary increase of
sales can really be attained. One of the big advantages of the
