156 THE MODEL STOCK PLAN 
and strengthen our knowledge of resources by laying out 
side by side the merchandise in stock of competing resources. 
This is the scientific way to plan, without undue external 
pressure or influence. Also, we should get the advice of 
salespeople, assistants, and heads of. stock, and thus make 
them realize more fully their responsibility for selling the 
goods so bought. If the department head actually consults 
his salespeople in advance about buying a certain article, 
and they approve it, they will sell it with more enthusiasm 
than if it is simply placed before them as something decreed 
by a higher power. 
To return now to the earliest purchases of the season, the 
buyer checks up on his early purchases partly by the way 
that they impress customers and partly by comparison with 
what other stores are offering. These comparisons he should 
make not only in the stores of his home-town competitors 
but also in the metropolitan stores of his central market, 
whether it is in New York or Chicago or San Francisco. 
He must do this to make sure that what he has bought is not 
only good style but also good value. 
Up to this point, the process is very much a guess. Some- 
times the buyer’s guess is right, sometimes it is wrong. 
Those of us familiar with the actual figures of retail mark- 
downs on style goods know how much difference jt makes in 
profits when the guess is wrong. Even staples—this cannot 
be too clearly emphasized—are too often bought solely by 
rule of thumb. Not only buyers but also managers are at 
fault in this. The big problem is to foresee general business 
and financial conditions. 
A buyer should, then, approach the buying for his first 
showing in profound humility, acknowledging to himself 
that he does not know with any certainty what his customers 
are going to want two or three months hence. It is impossi- 
ble to overemphasize this need for humility in all buying, 
even with the best assistance of scientific methods. A buyer 
who says frankly at all times and lives up to his admission, 
““the customer decides, not 1,” has found the best basis for 
merchandising; he has found the way to greater total profits.