BASEMENT STORES FOR THRIFTY CUSTOMERS 383 
and still leave enough money to maintain complete stocks 
at the full-line prices, or if the store caters only to a cheap 
trade, or if circumstances are otherwise against making a 
thorough and profitable job of the basement store operation. 
A good general rule is that it will pay to add a basement 
store only if it can do a large enough business to warrant a 
separate buyer or buyers. 
In most retail establishments where the question arises of 
whether or not to operate a basement store, the management 
has made no adequate study of the principles involved or 
of the experience of other stores which have respectively 
succeeded and failed in such undertakings. 
Nor can a sound decision be made merely on the strength 
of knowing the principles of operating a profitable basement 
store and being thoroughly familiar with the experience of 
other stores. These facts need to be considered in their 
relation to the particular store in which the new basement 
operation is contemplated. 
Too frequently a basement store is started on opinions, 
not on facts—a fundamental mistake. The usual result of 
such a start is that the basement is unsuccessful, or else 
successful at the expense of upstairs departments. The 
basement store, of course, should do its trade in addition to 
what can be done upstairs; it should not do its business on 
what is in large part the same stock at the same prices as 
upstairs. (Few business men think that their basement 
stores are doing this, although it is a common condition.) 
Starting a basement under unfavorable conditions not only 
may make it too difficult for the upstairs departments to 
carry really complete stocks and keep adequately busy 
but may also almost foredoom the basement operation to 
failure from the standpoint of profits. 
Rightly started under favorable auspices, however, a 
Model Stock basement store may yield large additional 
profits. As has been mentioned in earlier chapters, in a 
general way the three full lines of a Model Stock cover per- 
haps 85 per cent of the store’s possible total sales volume, 
leaving 15 per cent to be divided between the de luxe depart-