RETAIL TRADE : Causes of business men who begin their careers successfully complain that as time goes on they have a difficulty in holding their places in the business world, and their chief grievance is that competition is too strong for them. This is particularly so amongst the great army of retail traders whose businesses are by the modern tendency to the establishment of the large store. Face to face with the local branch of a large chain of shops, the trader on the spot is apt to ask, What can I do to prevent such competition ? and every adverse cell dition that operates against him in his business is put down to the inroads of these huge concerns. As a matter of fact, the branch store which is one of a chain of many stores, is serious competition for all traders in the same line, but it is by no means conclusive to the trader who is enter prising. While it has many advantages in buying, it has also a great many disadvantages in selling. To begin with, it cannot possess the same local knowledge as the trader who has been established in the small town for many years; nor can it be conducted in the elastic manner which follows a knowledge of local conditions. The branch establishment often shows the local trader many points in store-keeping which he might have realised for himself if he had not been too conservative or too apathetic.
The branch store is usually better planned, better fitted, and better furnished. It often carries a wider range of stock, and frequently it is better staffed than its competitors. But these advantages are by no means the monopoly of a big financial undertaking which is establishing branch stores in every town ; they could all be duplicated by the individual trader who was managing his business on modern and up-to-date lines. Another disadvantage of the branch store is that it :s nearly always strictly con fined to a cash and counter trade, and very rarely attempts an intimate local trade. The necessary local knowledge which would make the giving of credit safe is not usually possessed by such a concern. These are the advantages which the local trader always possesses. IIi3 knowledge of his clientele enables him to give credit with a certain degree of safety, and he should be able also, by delivery and by canvassing, to be in close touch with his customers.
The great trouble of the average local trader is that he is too con servative in his methods. Very often he has succeeded to a business and
has been trained by his own parents, which roughly mews that he has not been subjected to the discipline which an ordinary store would enforce upon its assistants. Going into the business as a youth, with relatives as fns teachers, the way has been made easy for him, and he has come to look on business from the point of view of the proprietor. The tendency of the proprietor of an old-established business is to regard it as something which prod aces him an income, and it very frequently happens that he fails to realise that fur the income which has been taken out of the busi ness for some generations, the establishment has had to render sonic service. A retailer brought up on these lines is too apt to consider his public as servants of his business, somewhat unaccountably, and voluntarily contri buting to his income, whereas the store managed on business lines usually starts out with the opposite point of view, regarding itself as the servant of its public, whose convenience has to be studied at every point.
This may sound a simple point to state, but it is the secret of much apathetic shop management in this country. The perspective of the shop keeper is wrong. One can choose town alter town and find the individual shopkeeper neglecting the most elementary principles of store-keeping. Ile does not advertise, or if he does, it is in a perfunctory sense; the fixtures that were handed down generations ago are the fixtures he uses to-day ; the lighting scheme was very often pat in when gas was first introduced, and as a consequence the shop is dingy and badly lighted at nightfall. The windows, too, are of a type that served twenty or forty years ago, and in matters of window display they cannot make any show against the up-to-date store, which has pressed into service modern design and has dressed its windows with the assistance of a capably trained window-dressser. The result of such a process is that the shop of the private trader very often does not compare in appearance with the shop of the monopolist who is busy establishing branches in every centre, and die public are not slow to appreciate the advantages of the better shop over the one which presents so poor an appearance.