VOL. XII.

IRVING P. Fox,

FRANK FARRINGTON, SAMUEL T. HENSEL, A. W. RIDEOUT,

Domestic subscription, Foreign subscription, .

Pharmaceutical Editor

. Advertising Representative

No. I

You may be ever so smart, and yet there will be other druggists who will think of good schemes that would never occur to you.

Take pains to find out what others are doing in your line; not your competitors especially, but the druggists of other towns. Read their advertisements and talk to the traveling men about what other dealers are doing. The traveling man is a vast fund of information if he

is properly utilized. Don't snub him.

Get out and walk around town occasionally and look into the other druggists' windows. If yours is a large town or a city, you can gain a great deal by this plan.

The Indifferent Clerk.

As a loser of trade there is nothing in the same class with the indifferent clerk. Whether he is indifferent because he constantly has his mind upon something outside the store-his Sunday off, or a ball game, or the newest girl in town, or because he is just naturally lazy - does not signify so much. If he is not alert and attentive to customers, if his heart

is not in his work, he is a losing proposition for both himself and his employer, and the sooner he quits, the better for both.

Making Changes.

Is the inside arrangement of your store as good as it might be? If that is the case, yours is a remarkable store. A little looking around will show where changes could be made in most stores to a manifest advantage. It is strange that storekeepers cling so hard to the old way. The notion that because we always had it this way it must be the right way, or at least a good enough way, is a notion and nothing more. What are you afraid of? Take off you coat and tear the inside of your store all to pieces and put it to gether again in a totally different way. If years of experience have taught you nothing in regard to store arrangement that you did not know when you began, there is something wrong with your brain.

Inventory.

Not every druggist knows when he is getting ahead, and worse than that, not every druggist knows when he is running behind. With a good stock at the beginning, many dealers make the mistake of thinking that the profits of the year's business are represented by the difference between the amount of the yearly sales and the yearly expenditures. Shrinkage of stock is not taken into account; neither is increase of stock. There is but one way to know what your business is doing and that is to inventory your goods every year. It means a good

deal of work to inventory, but you cannot do the same amount of work around the store where it will pay you any better. Inventory at the end of your business year and know where you stand and what you have in stock. You will be surprised every time.

What Lines Pay?

A Mr. Webber of Michigan has determined which lines pay in his drug store by inventorying the lines separately and periodically. He found that the candy did not pay because the clerks ate too much of it and the cigars paid in spite of all the clerks being smokers. He threw out the candy counter and retained the cigars. It seems to us that if we were running a drug store and the clerks ate so much candy that they left no profit on it, we would try having a heart-toheart talk with the clerks before beginning to break up the business. Further than that, it seems that even if a line were discovered to be slightly unprofitable in itself under fair conditions, it might often prove to be advisable to retain it as a trade bringer for other lines. It would not be our way to judge entirely by the inventory. Postage stamps are deemed profitable by all except the finicky few, though it would be hard to figure the profit on them. Advertising Is Not All.

Some advertisers have the idea that because they are advertisers they are bound to succeed without any effort in any other direction. Advertising will not build up a business of itself. It needs to be backed by the best and most

persistent kind of merchandising. There is no such thing as success by simply pressing the advertising button and allowing the advertising to do all the rest. Advertising will not keep up the stock; it will not keep the store clean and tidy nor the clerks attentive; it will not do a thousand and one other things that go to make a store prosperous. Advertising is necessary, but its necessity has been enlarged upon to such an extent that many a man has assumed that nothing else was needed. The rise in the importance of advertising has not decreased the importance of the merchandising; rather, it has enhanced it.

The Law.

If it were not for the druggists, the judges of many of the courts in the Western States could go fishing six days a week and to church on Sunday. It isn't because the pharmacists are such awful bad men, so much as because the police and other minor minions of the law must have something to do. So many laws enmesh the drug store that it is almost impossible for an ordinary apothecary not to be doing, however good his inten

tions, something he ought not to be doing. Hence he is always an easy prey. Occasionally, however, a Daniel comes to judgment. This happened recently in Colorado Springs, when a druggist was awarded by the court a verdict of $102 against the chief of police, for having illegally seized a three-quart bottle of alcohol and three pints of beer. Another druggist was given for a like grievance a verdict of $300 and costs. Justice of this kind is so rare as to make this

paragraph worthy of being cut out and pasted in the reader's scrap book.

Kicking Customers.

The dealer who does business on the assumption that everyone who comes into his store is ready to beat him if the chance offers, is making a serious mistake. It pays to trust people. When a man comes in with a complaint, take it for granted that he has a just grievance. If he is manifestly mistaken and you can show him to his satisfaction that he is, then you will lose nothing by differing with him, but if he thinks he is right and insists upon thinking so, yield as gracefully as you can, even to your own disadvantage. You can't afford to let a customer go away feeling that he has been treated unfairly, even if it costs you something to keep his good will. Never get angry over the discussion of the adjustment of a complaint. If you can't keep your temper in such cases, leave that sort of thing to a diplomatic clerk. To settle a claim ungraciously is to lose the cost of settling without gaining the customer's good will. Ready-made Ads.

There are numberless concerns who are prepared to supply the druggist with advertising matter that is ready made. Some of them give you a service that can be used to great advantage. Some of them know precious little about advertising and still less about the drug business. If you are going to patronize these people, patronize the ones whom you know to be dependable Don't be held up by some correspondence school