We earnestly solicit your patronage at our new store—not because by so doing you will help Mr. Burns (who has an interest in the profits of the company) but because you will get the best in kitchen hardware at cut-rate prices.
You will readily appreciate that an organization like ours can give you greater value than the usual hardware store, where the goods are bought in small lots by the proprietor or manager, who has many other duties to attend to. Our buyers are experts, who devote all their time to the study and search of markets; buying in tremendous quantities (for twenty-seven stores), and paying spot cash. We are thus able to sell merchandise for less than usual prices.
Mr. Burns hopes to meet all his friends on the opening day, January one. He has a surprise gift for every visitor to the store on that day.
Respectfully yours,
New England Hardware Company.
That had struck me as being a pretty good letter. It certainly was a clever idea to get Burns as their manager because he was very popular in the town. When the Bon Marche failed he had come to me, but, of course, I couldn't use him. Then he had told me that the chain-store people had made him an offer, and he went to work in their Hartford store. At that time he didn't say anything about the possibility of coming back to Farmdale as manager of a store for them. I don't think, as a matter of fact, that he had any idea that they were going to open a new store. Burns was a bully good fellow, and I honestly hoped he'd be successful, although I hoped the new store would not hurt us much. . . .
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 fagged 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.