The man interested in building a permanent busi ness must care for quality, whether he is a jobber or a manufacturer. Reputable jobbers, like reputable manufacturers, are unwilling to put their names on goods without merit.
8. Jobber wants to control kis market.—The pri vate brand jobber says that Ile ONVI1S his own busi ness. No salesman who leaves his employ to work for another jobber can take trade away from him. If a jobber's private brand has proved satisfactory to a retailer's customers and is in demand among them, the retailer is not likely to cut off his source of supply for those goods simply because of friendship for a salesman who has formerly sold them but who has now gone over to a rival jobbing house. Further more, the manufacturing jobber maintains that he owns his business in still another sense. He is the sole wholesale distributor of his brand; he can dictate prices and profits without interference by any manu facturer; and his market is not likely to be demoral ized by price-cutting by other jobbers, which some times does demoralize the market for manufacturer's nationally advertised goods that are offered by job bers as leaders.
9. Private brands mean, more customers.—The jobber sometimes says that his private brand will bring him new retail connections. If Ile advertises it and it is demanded by consumers, his salesmen will have less difficulty in opening new accounts than they have when all they can offer the retailer is the same line of manufacturers' goods that is also offered by other jobbers.
10. Why the 'manufacturer makes private brands. —The manufacturer who is willing to keep himself in the background and to make goods for the jobber to sell under the jobber's trade-mark has various reasons for this course. First, there is the manufac turer who ordinarily sells his goods under his own label, but who has produced more than his normal market can consume, and who finds himself with a warehouse full of goods that he cannot move. The temptation is great for him to remove his label from these surplus goods and to sell them to some jobber who wants to brand them with his own trade-mark. He says that this business is clear "velvet"; he gets trade that he could not get otherwise, and be does not believe he is injuring himself by the transaction in any way.
Then, there is the manufacturer who finds himself with some goods of second or third quality on hand, on which he does not wish to put his own label. If he can find some jobber who is willing to buy them and put his private brand on them, he believes he is making a clear gain. Some opponents of private brands charge that most of the jobbers' privately branded goods are obtained in this way. They have not proved this charge. There are countless goods bearing a jobber's trade-mark that are just as high in quality as any that are branded and advertised by a manufacturer.
Finally, there is the manufacturer who has no trade-mark of his own and who does nothing but make jobbers' or retailers' privately branded lines. He adopts this definite policy, sometimes, because it happens to have been a long established custom in his line of business and because jobbers and retailers in that line insist on having their own brands or none at all; sometimes, because he believes that by this method of doing business he saves much of the selling expense which the marketing of his own goods un der his own trade-mark would entail.
Allied to this manufacturer is one who has a single quality of goods and who puts his own trade-mark on part of his product, but is willing to sell the rest un branded to jobbers and retailers who insist on having their private brands. He believes in pushing his own brand, but he sees no harm in permitting exactly the same goods to be sold under any other brands if deal ers want them. He may try to protect the price on his own brand, and yet permit the same goods under private brands to be sold at any price the dealers wish to put on them. He believes, in other words, in doing everything possible to protect the he has built up for his name, but he sees no necessity for protecting the good-will that has been built up for the goods themselves, or else he believes that this good-will is not.endangered by his method of doing business.