The firm made its first sales-efforts on the watch through its own mail-order catalog. The results brought some encouragement, but proved that in itself this method could never bring the volume of sales necessary for a high-geared, uniform quantity of production.
The next recourse was to the so-called "regular trade-channels"—the jobbers and retailers. But these dealers displayed little interest. They were not promoters of new lines, but distributors of those for which a market already existed. The jobber sold what the retailers required; the retailers what the public demanded. Robert Ingersoll's original loud-ticking watch impressed them more in the light of a curiosity than as a trade-possibility. In particular it failed to appeal to the jewelers, since they felt it to be out of keeping with the beauty and value which characterized their stocks of jewelry and silverware. They reasoned, also, that sales of the new timepiece would interfere with those of their higher-priced watches, thus failing to grasp the fact, since proved to be true, that its use would greatly enlarge the sphere of their sales through cultivating a general watch-carrying habit.
Waltham Thin Model Type of the Finest American Watch
Ingersoll Waterbury Radiolite
"Tells Time in the Dark"
