An Indiana man and his bride were returning in their automobile from a trip to the country, and passed a beautiful rural bungalow on a small farm, which the bride greatly admired. She told her husband she would like to own that place.
Arriving in the city, he left his wife at her mother’s and drove to his office. Hastily glancing over the letters on his desk, he turned to the want ads. of the daily paper, and scanned them carefully until he found one which announced that a man about to establish a dairy wanted to buy any number of milch cows, up to fifty.
Suddenly he remembered that in a country paper, a few days before, he had read an ad. of an auction sale of milch cows, to be sold at a place about thirty miles from the city. He found the paper in his auto-coat pocket and saw that the auction sale was to take place the next day, so in the morning he kissed his bride good by, told her he would be back that evening, jumped into his machine and drove away.
Arriving at the place where the cows were, he looked them over carefully, saw they were of a good grade, looked at the sale announcement again, and noticed it stated that any purchaser of one cow could take the lot at the same price per head. Then he waited until a poor, scrawny heifer was put up for sale, bid her in for $35, and announced that he would take them all at that price. The owner and several bidders objected, but the auctioneer pointed to the terms of the sale, and, having the cash with him, our friend paid for the herd, hired two men to drive them to the address of the man who wanted cows, sold them at a profit of $1,000, and drove home that evening with the deed made out to his bride for the bungalow and little ranch she wanted. This is illustrative of the opportunity that appears when one knows both the sellers’ and buyers’ wants.
PLAN No. 459. SELLING WATCHES ON INSTALLMENTS
An experienced salesman in an eastern city, having an idea that if other kinds of goods could be sold on the installment plan watches could also be sold that way, decided to try it out and see.
Beginning with a capital of less than $100, he first arranged with a watch factory that turns out a fairly good timekeeper at a low price, to supply him with a certain number of watches at from $3 to $12 each, to be delivered to him in small lots at first, as he could pay for them; and having expended the greater part of his $100 for these, he worked it at first simply as a local proposition, doing the canvassing himself. As the watches all contained an American movement, the cheapest of them having a five-year guaranteed case, they gave good satisfaction, and the monthly payments were promptly made, almost without exception.
It was not long until the business was paying him from $250 to $300 a month, and at that time he began to make it a mail-order business, advertising in a list of papers recommended by a reliable agency.
He aimed to sell every watch for at least three times what it cost him, and as he required from 25 to 33 per cent as a cash payment, this usually paid the wholesale cost of the watch, while subsequent payments were practically clear profit.
To those replying to his ads. he sent a neat circular, with illustrations of the various watches he had for sale, with prices, terms, etc., and these brought a very large percentage of sales. He is now averaging $500 a month net profit.