8. Conzplete stocks.—The specialty store also can often offer a complete stock in its one line, as against the more restricted stocks in many lines of the aver age department store. However, this advantage is not universal. One large department store in Chicago, for instance, carries a larger stock of jewelry than all except two or three of the largest specialty jewelry shops. But it is to be expected that the progressive store owner who gives his entire thought to one kind of goods will be able to offer customers a larger assortment than the paid buyer of a small section in a large department store.
9. Personal service.—The specialty store owner should be able to offer his customer a more personal service than can be offered by the department store. He knows many of his customers personally; he usually relies less on transient trade; and he is in bet ter position to select a stock that will meet the re quirements of a known market. The personal touch is of great importance in business. The owner's per sonality has made many successful specialty stores. To be sure, there is almost an equal opportunity for the capitalization of personality on the part of the sec tion buyer in a department store. Yet it is less diffi cult for the small store owner to impress his personal ity and his methods upon his subordinates than it is for a superior to do the same thing in a great system ruled department store.
10. Fast turnovers.—Inasmuch as the specialty store owner usually knows his trade and can readily adjust his stock to known needs, he should be able to carry relatively smaller stocks and thereby turn his capital faster than the department store buyer whose market is wider and less stable. Perhaps this is more a theoretical than an actual advantage, be cause we find that the record for turnovers is held usually by department stores. The opportunity is the greater, however, for the specialty store owner who is of equal caliber with the department store man.
11. Low expenses.—Despite the economies possi ble in the operation of a department store, depart ment store selling expenses seem to have mounted well above the costs of doing business in the average specialty establishment. Recent investigations re sulted in the publication of the following figures show ing the average costs of doing business in a number of specialty stores and department stores. The per centages are based on total sales as follows : Groceries 15.91 Vehicles and implements 17.44 Variety goods 17.76
Hardware 19.41 Clothing 9,0.27 Dry-goods 9,3.05 Shoes 23.22 Furniture 23.91 Drugs 24.65 Jewelry 25.81 Department stores 26.18 The value of statistics of this sort depends on the accuracy of the accounting on which they are based and on the number of cases investigated. The fig ures are given as merely suggestive of the general relation probably existing between selling expense in specialty shops and in department stores. If the spe cialty store owner has the advantage which the figures seem to indicate, he should be able to pass on part of his advantage to his customers in some way so o.s to in crease his strength in competition with the depart ment store.
12. Competitive weakness of the specialty store.— The specialty store has its points of weakness as well as of strength. Among them are the following: 13. Limited trade.—Specialty stores are mostly. neighborhood establishments. Possible customers are limited to those people living or working in the vicin ity of the store. Many neighborhood specialty stores do a comparatively small business for tbis reason. A few neighborhood stores overcome this disadvan tage and draw trade from great distances, but they are decidedly the exception. This disadvantage is overcome when the specialty shops are centrally lo cated.
14. Limited advertising opportunities.—The purely local nature of the business of most neighbor hood stores precludes the profitable use of newspaper advertising. Suppose that a city has twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and the leading newspaper has a circulation of four thousand. The four thousand subscribers are scattered all over town. All who ad vertise in the paper must pay the same rate, which is based on the total circulation. A small neighbor hood store, appealing at the most, let us say, to two or three hundred of the four thousand subscribers, would find the waste circulation so large as to make the advertising rate prohibitively high.
Although the centrally located specialty shop does not have the same advertising disadvantage as the neighborhood store, it still suffers in an advertising way in contrast with its large department store corn petitor. The latter, because of its size and the num ber of different kinds of things it has to offer, can often use much larger advertising space than it would be profitable for the specialty store to use. No matter how carefully it is prepared the small advertisement does not always attract the same attention as a larger one.