Page 262 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

heads of small business firms within walking distance, and the managers of
two tea rooms and a restaurant a few blocks away. Many of these
announcements were followed by personal calls and with practically every
call she sold the idea to the prospective customer. Her two young sons
delivered the flowers each morning and once a month Mrs. Harper collected
the money for them. This personal contact with her customers gave her a
chance to handle any complaints and also the opportunity to sell her
customers on other uses for her flowers. Through subtle suggestion, she
secured many orders for table decorations, decorations for parties, weddings,
bridal showers, “new baby” baskets, and holiday festivities. During the
winter, she bought her flowers from the flower market and continued the
service to her customers at a slightly higher cost.

Two young New Yorkers also found the establishment of a flower service a
way out of their difficulties. They had been wearily trudging from
employment office to employment office looking for jobs until one day they
realized that the only way to get a job was to make one. They pooled their
resources which amounted to the grand sum of $1.50 and started in business.
With their “capital” they purchased a thousand business cards and distributed
them on foot from office to office, hotel to hotel, restaurant to restaurant. A
little sales talk went with the distribution of each card. Today, they have built
up a nice little business. Having no capital left to buy the flowers would have
made things difficult for them if a wholesale florist had not agreed to wait
until the tenth of the month following their purchases to bill them. This
arrangement gave them time to collect their money before the bills fell due.
Since they have access to the wholesaler’s stock at all times, there is no need
for them to invest in stock of their own. The flowers are sold on a monthly
fee basis and the bouquets are changed every third day. The fee depends, of
course, upon the number of bouquets furnished.

Rug Washing Is a Quick-Profit Business

E

DWARD ANDERSON washed his first thousand dollars out of other