106 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
the year around. Since these mark-downs in each instance 
result in sufficient sales of the next cheaper full line to make 
the net total result profitable, these mark-downs turn what 
has been a slack, mo-profit period into a profitable period. 
But we must not leap to the conclusion that our higher- 
income customers during this time will not find in our store 
as high-priced goods as they are accustomed to find and as 
they want. If they are looking for the almost past season’s 
goods, it is apparent that they will find their accustomed 
qualities at a much cheaper price than they expected. And 
in the de luxe department and the highest-priced full line 
they find the early showings of new goods of the next season; 
these goods will already be arriving in sufficient quantities 
so that we can advertise them—thus increasing our reputa- 
tion for style leadership—while our competitors’ advertise- 
ments are still talking about mark-downs. 
Let us briefly return to a subject that was covered some 
chapters back,! how to set properly the three full-line prices. 
For now, while we are considering mark-downs, we begin to 
detect a relationship which earlier may not have been 
apparent. 
If the prices on the three full lines are not properly set in 
the first place, there will be losses, of course, but they will 
be less than with a plan that fails to show at what prices the 
customers will buy most. Suppose a buyer purchases a 
great quantity of merchandise at a price that forces him to 
mark it much higher than his trade warrants. Violent 
publicity may enable him to sell part of it at the false price. 
But the chances are very strongly against his selling all of 
it that way. The customer is not interested in the price the 
buyer paid for the merchandise, nor in the price at which 
the buyer is forced to sell in order to make a profit. What 
matters to her and, therefore, to the buyer is the price she is 
willing to pay. 
The wrongly bought merchandise will probably have to be 
marked down not to an arbitrary figure but to the next lower 
L Chapter II, p. 14.