Selling Through the Trade.—The older plan for a large manufacturer to dispose of his goods is through the retail stores, but this is a more costly and a harder way than by the direct method of reaching the consumer.
The reason for this is that the manufacturer does not deal directly with the retailer, but must do so through a lot of middlemen of whom there are in some cases not less than three and often more.
Fig. 102. SELLING THROUGH THE TRADE
Figure 102 shows how many different concerns stand between the manufacturer and those who buy his goods; the manufacturer turns his product over to the commission man who unloads it on the jobber or wholesaler, who sends drummers on the road, who make the retailer buy it, who hands it out over the counter to his customers, who are merely acquaintances of his.
All of the middlemen make big profits while the manufacturer and the retailer have to be satisfied with a very small margin and the consumer knows that he is paying several prices too many for the article he buys.
The advantage, though, of handling your product through middlemen lies in the fact that you can very often get a commission man, or a jobber, to contract for the entire output of your factory, and sometimes a certainty of this kind with small fixed profits is better than taking a chance of putting a large sum into advertising with the uncertainty of large profits or of no profits at all.
Getting Publicity.—Going back once more to the time when you have completed your model and your patent has just been granted, it is often a good idea to give some publicity to your invention.
By publicity I mean to get some write-ups in the papers and some articles in the magazines and if you go about it the right way it will not cost you anything for space and sometimes the editors will even pay you for your contributions.
When you have reached the stage where you want some publicity write up a clear description of say 500, 1000 or 2000 words, depending on the importance and intricacy of your invention, and have a typewritten copy made of it; next have some good 5 by 7, or better, 8 by 10 photographs made of your model from different viewpoints. Small kodak pictures are of no value in obtaining free publicity for clean-cut, large pictures, count for as much or more with the average editor than either subject matter or written copy.