5. Some lines not sold by jobbers.—Some manu factured lines have developed in such a way that they are no longer generally handled by jobbers. Ready to-wear clothing, for instance, is not commonly con sidered a profitable jobbing line. When goods of this sort cease to be profitable to the jobbers, they either abandon them or become manufacturers on their own account, and the retailer is forced to buy from the manufacturer.
6. .Retailer knows sources of supply.—The fact that consumers are increasingly acquiring the habit of buying goods by name encourages the habit among retailers of thinking of the manufacturer rather than of the jobber as the natural source 'of supply for the things in their stores. As long as customers gen erally asked simply for flour, the dealer did not pay much attention to brands and manufacturers; he bought usually on a price and quality basis from the jobber. But when his customers began to ask for Gold Medal flour, Pillsbury's Best or some other ad vertised brand, the manufacturer's instead of the job ber's name was the one that naturally occurred to the retailer -when he thought about ordering. National advertising has made the manufacturer known to the retailer.
7. Some jobbers sell to consumers.—Some jobbers have antagonized the retailer by invading what the retailer claims as his field. The jobber often sells di rectly to large consumers, and many jobbing houses have openly established retail stores. This arouses resentment among those retailers who believe that each factor in trade should stick closely to its own pe culiar function. When a jobber owns several success ful retail stores in,a city, it is not to be expected that the competing individually owned stores will be eager to increase his prosperity and competitive strength by patronizing his wholesale establishment.
8. Charge of price discrimination.—Finally, the charge has been made by some retailers' associations that certain jobbers do not have fixed prices for fixed quantities, that they favor certain dealers and dis criminate against others, and that when one retailer buys goods from a jobber at a certain price he can not be sure that his next-door competitor is not going to buy the same goods from the same jobber at a lower price. This charge is not generally true, tho some jobbers not only admit it but even defend the prac tice on the ground that the shrewdest buyer should get the best bargains. In any case the practice is re sented by many retailers, and it is helping in many lines to -widen the breach between jobber and retailer.
9. Why the manufacturer sells direct.—"Selling direct" in trade parlance ordinarily means going over the jobber's head and selling direct to the retailer. The manufacturer's declaration of independence of the jobber is founded in two classes of reasons : first, those that might apply to the old-line jobber who has not varied his activities from the traditional model, and, second, those that apply only to the jobber who has departed from the old model and has undertaken or abandoned certain activities in an attempt to strengthen his position. These changed activities have often in their turn reacted further to antagonize the manufacturer and to emphasize the changing function of the wholesale distributor. In this chap ter we shall consider the first group of reasons; the second will be treated in the following chapter.
10. Jobber's inability to push one line.—One of the most noticeable recent developments in trade is the enormous increase in the number of manufactured lines which the jobber handles. A recent catalog of a wholesale grocer contained over 6,000 items divided among 724 different kinds of goods. Among them, for instance, were 102 brands of coffee, 30 different kinds of coffee substitutes, 84 makes of canned beans and 75 kinds of cigars. Obviously, the amount of real salesmanship that can be put behind any one manu facturer's goods by the jobber's representatives is exceedingly limited. It is utterly impossible for the jobber's salesmen to know the selling points of more than a very small part of all the things they are sup posed to sell. This is unsatisfactory to the manufac turer who wants the aid of personal salesmanship in the pushing of his goods.
The advertising manufacturer feels that because he aids the jobber by creating demand, the jobber should reciprocate by telling his salesmen to get behind the manufacturer's goods. The jobber does not see it in that way. How can he push one manufacturer's goods without being unfair to other manufacturers? If the manufacturers of both Ivory soap and Fairy soap, for instance, deal thru the jobber, how can the jo' bber urge his salesmen to put their efforts behind one brand without being unfair to the other? The physical necessities of the case compel the jobber to say to the retailer: "Here are many different brands of goods. They are all good, or I should not be handling them. Take your choice." This situation is satisfactory neither to those manufacturers who do notadvertise nor to those who want real sales service to supplement their advertising.