Page 234 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

and chain stores have narrowed the opportunities for general mail-order
operations until mail-order selling has become too speculative for the man of
small capital. But while the opportunities may be fewer for starting a general
mail-order business, the door is wide open for starting a specialized business.
National advertising, the radio and the movies have done one thing for the
American merchant that is not always appreciated. They have created a
multiplicity of new wants, they have sharpened tastes, they have made people
dissatisfied with the garden variety of things bought in stores and have made
them receptive to the specialized appeal. So we may set it down as principle
number one in starting a mailorder business that there must be something
distinctive either about what you are selling, or about the way you sell it.

People will buy most easily things which they are not able to buy in local
stores, or because they feel that they are obtaining a definite price advantage.
It is interesting to note, in this connection, that what gave Richard Sears his
start on the road to success was not the kind of watches he sold but the way
he sold them. When he became station agent at North Redwood, Minnesota,
he had had some experience selling unclaimed merchandise. He found that
people would pay top prices for such merchandise under the impression that
they were profiting by another’s misfortune. So he conceived the idea of
buying watches at wholesale, and sending them to fictitious names in care of
other ticket agents. When the ticket agent wrote him that the watch had not
been called for, Sears wrote back to sell the watch at a certain price, and
deduct a commission for making the sale. While this is hardly a method that
would succeed in these days, the principle which Sears used, that is to say
“staging the sale,” is just as effective today as it was then. It is not enough
merely to offer to sell a man; you must develop and present to him some
reason why he should buy.

Since buying by mail requires complete confidence of the purchaser in the
seller, the name of the company or business is important. Use AngloSaxon
names, if possible. One of the big mail-order houses, which successfully sold
women’s wear by mail for a number of years before being merged with
another company, was the Charles William Stores of New York. This was
just a name. There was no Mr. Charles, nor was there any Mr. Williams. Had
Morris Rosenbaum used his own name when he started the National Cloak &