PLAN No. 388. SANITARY HANDKERCHIEFS
An observing young woman who had noticed how often many people find themselves without a clean, dry handkerchief, under certain critical conditions, and how greatly they would appreciate an opportunity to secure one, evolved a plan by which they could be conveniently and economically supplied. This is how she did it!
Visiting a wholesale house, she learned that she could purchase a soft laundered handkerchief of fairly good quality, in lots of 1,000 or more, for 3 cents each. She also arranged for several thousand sanitary, transparent envelopes, at 20 cents per hundred, to be taken in lots of 1,000, as needed, and got 200 showcards on which was printed, “Sanitary Handkerchiefs, 10 cents.”
Placing one of the handkerchiefs in each envelope, she left them on sale at drug stores, cigar stores, newsdealers, restaurants, department stores, and elsewhere, to be sold on a commission of 2 cents each, and kept a list of the places where they had been placed on sale.
All that remained for her to do was to visit the various places where she had left the handkerchiefs, make collections on sales, and replenish depleted stocks.
She derived a net profit of a little over 4 cents on each handkerchief sold, and as the sales averaged considerably over 200 a day, they brought her a good income the year round.
PLAN No. 389. A PARCEL-POST EXCHANGE
A young farmer in Illinois, who knew only too well that the city dealer always sets the price upon the farmers’ products, as well as upon his own goods, thought he saw an opportunity to help the producer get more for what he had to sell, pay less for what he had to buy, and make some money for himself besides.
He had about $1,000 in cash, and, removing to the city, he rented a small store and got in touch with a large mail-order house that agreed to sell him certain articles, especially for the use of farmers, at considerably less than catalog rates, provided he ordered a certain quantity.
He then prepared a circular letter, requesting those farmers who wanted higher prices for their butter, eggs, chickens, fruit and vegetables, to send them to him in exchange, by parcel post, for any of the articles on the list he enclosed therewith, assuring them of from 10 to 20 per cent higher prices than they could obtain from the regular commission houses, while the prices he quoted on the merchandise he would exchange for these were considerably lower than those of the mail-order houses from which he bought them, and yet left him a fair margin of profit. At the same time he addressed a circular letter to one thousand or more families in the city, offering to supply them with strictly fresh farm produce for much less than they had been paying in the city markets for articles of uncertain age and quality.