Wednesday I had dinner again with Roger Burns. He told me that the chain store for which he was manager had opened in good shape, and that on the opening day they had given a clock calendar to the visitors as a souvenir. It had been a cheap clock in a metal frame, so made that it would either hang on the wall or stand on a shelf, while attached to it below was a year's calendar. Above the clock had been written the slogan:
"All the time is the right time to buy kitchen goods from the New England Hardware Company."
Below the face of the clock was the address and Roger Burns' name as manager.
Roger said something, that night, that interested me mightily.
"One reason why chain stores make a success is that they try to dominate the field in one direction. For example, look at the five-and-ten-cent stores. Notice how they all dominate any other store of their kind. They have something distinctive and unusual about them. Notice the places of the big drug and tobacco chain-store systems. They dominate in some particular way!"
That word "dominate" stuck in my mind. "How do you purpose to dominate?" I asked of Roger.
"Well, in one way we are dominating in the brush field now. At our new store here, I have a bigger variety of household brushes than all the other stores put together. We have anything in the way of a brush that you want; and they're all good ones, too. . . . Most people dominate in some way," he continued. "Mr. Barlow dominates for miles around in agricultural implements."
"And I?" I said.
"Well, you are hardly dominating yet, but you could, if you wanted to, in electrical domestic goods and men's toilet goods."
"Good Heavens," I said, "they're both side lines!"