Part 35 (2/2)

The day after I received the circular letter I had a telephone call from Burns. He had come into town to take charge of getting the new store ready. We made an appointment to have Christmas dinner together and he promised to tell me how his firm had gone about opening the new store in Farmdale.

I had been doing a little figuring, and I didn't know whether we'd do our $30,000 in the fiscal year or not. Up to the end of November--that is for six months--our business had amounted to $13,872.00, $1,128.00 below our quota. However, in the last two days we had taken in $345.00 and I had been able to pay off the last few of our monthly accounts.

Barrington, too, had told me he'd wait until the first of the year; but insisted that I tell him then what I could do.

I wished I could increase the business a little bit more, for my expenses were still high, and we were all of us feeling f.a.gged through being under-staffed. We could well have done with another clerk; but we just couldn't afford it. However, while Betty was away I could work day and night, if necessary, and then, perhaps, by the time she got back, we'd have things in such shape that I could afford another clerk.

As arranged, I had Christmas dinner with Roger Burns at his boarding-house.

After dinner Roger told me some of the methods that the New England Hardware Company used in locating stores and carrying on their business.

”You know, Jackdaw,” said Roger (when I was at school the boys all called me Jackdaw; one reason I suppose was that I was so dark and my first name was Dawson), ”it is some months since the New England Hardware people hired me and sent me to Hartford as a.s.sistant in their store there. After I had been with them for a month, they s.h.i.+fted me to their Providence store for a month as a.s.sistant manager. From there I was sent out as traveling inspector, and spent two months in visiting each of the stores and spending a day or two at each one. Then I was called to New York--as you know, they have their head office there--and was coached in methods of handling the records which they required store managers to send in to the office.

”Not only did they tell me what records had to be made out, and how they had to be made out, but they showed me what happened to them when they reached the New York office, and also explained very clearly the need for all those records.

”I learned more about business, Jackdaw, in those six months than I ever knew before. They didn't just tell me what to do, but they told me why it had to be done. Every question that I asked them about running a store they answered for me. No trouble seemed too great for them to take, if it was going to help me to understand how they did business. I thought they were telling me altogether too much; they were telling the secrets of the conduct of the business; but Mr. Marcosson (he's a weird combination--a Scotchman with a sense of humor)--Mr. Marcosson is the general sales manager--he said that I couldn't be any use to them, unless I knew all about the business; what the goods would cost me in the store, how much profit I ought to make, how much turn-over I ought to get, and Oh! it would take me a month to tell you all the facts they gave me.

”One thing has stuck out clearly in my mind from this training, and that is, that I can do my work for them much better than would have been possible if I had been working under an ordinary store proprietor. I know _why_ things should be done. There's real horse sense at the back of every move they take. They don't guess at things. They find out. If you were to ask me what accounts for the big success of chain-store organizations I should say that it is that the chain-store organization _knows_ what it is doing, while the ordinary retailer _guesses_ at what he is doing. For instance, they are looking for towns for two men who are going through the same training that I went through--”

”Do you mean to tell me, Roger,” I broke in, ”that they spent six months' time in training you, when you might leave them at any minute?”

”H'm, h'm,” said Roger, ”that's a fact. Marcosson said that, as soon as any one could do better for me than they could, they expected me to leave. And it is a fact that, out of all the managers they have had, only three of them have left. Of course, it's a fairly young organization--been in existence only about five or six years; but the employees are treated so well that they rarely want to leave.

”You know I get an interest in the profits the store makes--”

And that reminded me, I hadn't yet worked out that profit-sharing plan for my people! It had been no easy job.

”Another thing,” continued Roger, ”Marcosson said that impressed me very much. 'We are going to give you a share in the profits, Mr. Burns,' he said, 'because we believe it is due you.' You know, Jackdaw, Marcosson is the kind of man you can speak right out to--not the kind of man you get scared of at all; so I said to him: 'I've heard many people say that profit-sharing isn't a success.' 'So far as we are concerned, it is,' he said. 'Most retailers who go into profit-sharing plans go into them with but a very slight study of the problem. They don't think the thing through to a logical conclusion, and they put into operation some half-baked plan which, of course, does not work out right, and then, instead of blaming the plan they d.a.m.n the policy as a whole!

Profit-sharing is necessary in modern retail business; but its operation must be planned in a common-sense way to be successful. One might just as well complain of the principles of arithmetic because one cannot do a sum correctly!'

”But let me get back to my story of how we came here,” said Roger, lighting a fresh cigar. . . .

While he was talking, I had been looking at Roger, and comparing him to the old Roger Burns I had known a year or so ago. He had grown bigger--not in size, you understand, but he was a bigger man--he had a personality which he never had had before. He had more confidence in himself, and I attributed this to the fact that he was sure of what he was about. He knew exactly what was expected of him--he had been trained thoroughly to do it, and that had given him a confidence which I was sure will make for his success in Farmdale. Frankly, I felt that, as a compet.i.tor, he was going to be a much keener one than Stigler ever had been.

”The New England Hardware Company,” continued Roger, ”has money enough to open as many stores as it wishes; but it can open stores only as quickly as it can get men. So the first thing it seeks is a man who is likely to make a good manager, then it looks for a location in which to place him.”

”Is that how all chain-store organizations do?” I asked.

”No,” replied Roger. ”Some of them look around for towns where the merchants are not on to their jobs. That's the way some of the big drug store chains in particular operate. They go around to the towns where the existing drug-store proprietors are dead, and don't know it, and where there is practically no compet.i.tion for them, and that's where they open the store.

”My people go at it a little differently. Where possible, however, they try to open a store with a manager who is known in the location.”

”Do they ever buy existing stores and make them part of the chain?”

”No, although some chain organizations do that.”

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