THE WAY TO GREATER TOTAL PROFITS 7
applies them to handling merchandise at very low price
levels. Manufacturers make satisfactory profits selling
Woolworths, to retail at five or ten cents, goods that inde-
pendent retailers often have to sell at double or treble the
rice.
P Products in the higher-price ranges actually offer op portuni-
ties for far larger proportionate savings. This field is almost
untouched.
Imagine the profits to our store of being in a situation com-
parable to Woolworth’s; our resources will know that we
are always open to buy goods of exceptional value in three
retail price lines for each class of goods, all higher than
Woolworth’s. Obviously, we can make more savings and
more total profits in the higher-price lines than on the same
number of transactions in five- and ten-cent merchandise.
In this book we shall see how to use a merchandising plan
which corrects one of the greatest weaknesses of distribution,
namely, that of depending upon special bargain lots instead
of depending upon the whole stock being right.
A Model Stock is a whole stock of bargains, in the sense that
a more than ordinarily good value is a bargain. It offers a
complete stock at three standardized prices, a stock that sells
more goods more profitably than any incomplete, less carefully
selected stock even twice or three times as large. How and why
this is true we shall see as we absorb the facts brought out
clearly in this book.
If a store tries to spread its stock over too big a price
range—the same thing, in slightly different terms, applies to
manufacturing or wholesaling—it meets two outstanding
difficulties: First, the store loses sales because its stocks
cannot be really complete if they are scattered over too
big a price range. Second, if the retailer tries to carry
enough stock to avoid losing sales, he has too many
leftovers and too slow a rate of turnover for the greatest
total profits.
Consider, for instance, the number of items—sizes, colors,
materials—necessary for a complete stock even at one price
