The Adair County News

Buying in Distant Cities.

People sometimes tell the home merchant that he does not sell as cheaply as metropolitan stores or mail order houses in more or less distant cities. Any person wishing to compare two scales of prices should inquire whether the distant store was selling the same goods. Second grade products can be made to look very handsome in a catalogue cut. But the home merchant cannot float that kind of goods. They come back to his store too easily. It is amusing to see the bother people will take for trifling sums they think they are saving. They will travel many miles, spend street car fare, pay for luncheons, hotel bills, and tips. They get tired and footsore tramping around overgrown stores, separated by long distances. They wait for change, carry bundles and express. They pay a high price in money and energy for supposed economies. When you buy goods away from home you rarely take them back. The bother and expense looks prohibitive. When you buy at home you would return if dissatisfied. This takes the time of clerks; frequently the goods have been injured while in your hands. Where it is so easy to return goods the customer must be given both the worth of his money, and something suited to his needs. A higher grade of salespeople is thus required in the home store. To make a sale that will stick so near home, the customer must be given intelligent advice. Thus the public demands from the home store more competent service than it exacts from the distant merchant. This means additional expense, which is counterbalanced by lower rents and like economies. When you consider how generously the home store responds to all kinds of demands, reasonable and unreasonable, the range of its prices is remarkably low.