8. Selling by mail to get distribution.—When a manufacturer attempts to induce dealers to handle . his goods he is often met with the statement: "We will handle your goods if you will first create a de mand for them." To meet this situation, a manufac turer may decide to sell direct to consumers by mail. Then, when he can show a certain number of people who are regular users of his goods, dealers are or dinarily glad to handle them. That it is possible to create ma demand thru the mails, and later to turn the business into dealer channels, is evidenced by the experience of the Lindstrom-Smith Company„ of Chicago, manufacturers of vibrators and other elec trical appliances.
I sold by mail-order exclusively until four years ago, when the expressed interest of the dealers became so strong that I decided to go after the dealer business in a whole-hearted fashion. Contrary to the expectation of some of my friends, the ratio between mail-order and dealer sales in my business during the last four years is as follows : Dealer Mail-Order 1912 25% 75% 1913 50% 50% 1911 70% 30% 1915 80% 20% Yet my mail-order business has increased absolutely at a greater rate each succeeding year, altho we refer mail-order inquiries to dealers when there is a dealer in the prospect's locality. The reason for this, I think, lies largely in the atti tude we take toward the dealer. We sincerely believe that our mail-order methods are the best, if not the only possible means of "sampling" the country for the dealer's benefit.
Some manufacturers attempt to obtain dealer dis tribution and to do a mail-order business at the same time. Dealers in most cases do not like this. If a manufacturer who has a dealer in a community tries to induce him to push sales of the manufacturer's goods, and yet accepts direct mail orders from con sumers in that community, the dealer is not to be blamed if he is not enthusiastic about the manufac turer and his product. There are two accepted meth ods of overcoming this difficulty. The more common is for a manufacturer who receives mail orders to fill direct orders from communities in which he has no dealers, to turn over to his retailers mail orders that come from territories in which there is a distributer. The other method is for the manufacturer to fill mail orders direct, but to give dealers their profits on busi ness from their communities, even when the manu facturer fills the order himself. A dealer who re ceives a check for a transaction in which he has had no part is inclined to feel that he is overlooking a profit by not handling the manufacturer's line, and he is likely to be entirely willing to cooperate with a man who treats the trade so fairly.
9. Department store mail-order campaigns.—As methods of transportation are improved and as the people of any trade territory gain confidence in the department stores in the large cities, these establish ments find themselves more and more forced to in stal mail-order departments. Many of them do not carry on extensive mail-order campaigns; they accept such mail orders as come to them, but do not go out actively after mail-order business. Others use differ ent kinds of direct advertising, and some advertise for mail orders in periodicals. A common method is to
depend on the suburban circulation of newspapers to bring in orders by mail as a result of the regular news paper advertisements.
There is difference of opinion as to whether a de partment store should publish regular mail-order catalogs.
There are only a few department stores that try to do business by mail over large sections of the country. The regular department store buyers are often not competent to judge the requirements of the country trade, and, unless a special mail-order stock is main tained separate from the stock for the store, many items listed in a catalog are likely to be sold out be fore mail-order customers order them. Perhaps the most general practice among progressive department stores is not to carry a separate mail-order stock, nor to issue complete mail-order catalogs, but, instead, to issue frequent small bulletins of regular current store offerings, all of them subject to prior sale ; or to encourage mail orders in newspaper copy, and then to build up mail-order trade by careful attention to orders when they are received.
10. General mail-order distributers.—The cam paigns of the great mail-order houses that sell almost numberless things over wide sections of the country are too well known to need much description, Most of these houses use periodicals, reaching people more or less distant from large and well-stocked stores, chiefly for the purpose of getting the names of people to whom complete catalogs may be sent. Then these names are followed up with a great variety of at tractive direct advertising matter until the prospect has become a regular customer or until his case has proved hopeless. As was shown in a previous chap ter, some of the mail-order houses have grown to such tremendous proportions that there are few periodicals they can profitably use to add more names to their lists.
11. Mail-order successes and failures.—The public is inclined to believe that selling by mail is easy and that there is little expense or risk in it. As a matter of fact the number of mail-order failures probably greatly exceeds the number of successes. People are so familiar with the large volume of business done by a few of the better known mail-order establish ments, that many are tempted to go into the mail order business for themselves, without adequate capital and without the careful preliminary study which such a business requires. In no line of selling activity is it possible to be successful without in tensive investigation of the thing to be sold, the people to be reached, the methods of reaching them and, above all, the probable costs of conducting the enterprise. All these things are particularly neces sary in undertaking a mail-order business. Costs of doing business are the rock on which many such busi nesses have been wrecked. But if the risks are great, the opportunities are equally large. Hundreds of business houses, now finding a limited market for their goods, can, with proper preparation, greatly enlarge their field and their sales by cultivating the trade which in many cases can be quickly, safely and profit ably reached thru the mails.