of thirty varieties of anything, rather than display all the thirty at once, it is better to make three displays of ten each or two displays of fifteen each. When the first display of ten has a few vacancies add a few from the reserve stock, that freshens up the display without impeding a choice. If you go into a post-card store you will see such an immense array of cards and colors, that you won't know where to begin, you will be confused. The post-card dealer is evidently trying to show every design in his stock at once. Far better is it to arrange those cards in groups with plenty of space between them and not too many in a group, then choice is made easy. Many displays are overdone. Too much contrast is no contrast; too big a variety becomes a "confusion worse confounded," and retards what it is intended to promote.

To sum up, a good window display has the same function as a good ad.,-to attract attention, create desire, and convince. It is a form of advertising; therefore it should possess salesmanship qualities. The window displays should be planned ahead just like the advertising campaign and should co-operate with it. Avoid the common mistakes of overcrowding, poor arrangement, absence of show cards and price tickets, infrequent changes, lack of harmony of colors and decorations used. It is not enough for your window display merely to attract people's attention, it must create a desire and convince them that they should come in and buy the article displayed.

Show but one article at a time or articles closely related. Have your displays seasonable. Display goods in their best selling season. Your windows are the eyes of your store and as you keep your own eyes clean and bright and free from cobwebs, keep your store's eyes in the same condition. Have your displays simple rather than complex. Do not have the decorations more attractive than the goods. It is the goods that you sell, not the decorations. Your store is judged by its window displays. Make them attractive and inviting to the general public.

DIVISION X

SPECIAL SALES AND SIDE LINES

CHAPTER XLI.

HOW TO CONDUCT SPECIAL SALES.

You should not attempt to inaugurate a special sale unless you have a real or apparent reason for doing it. You must give reasons for cutting prices or for giving special bargains. You may be closing out some department-you may wish to celebrate your anniversary with a big saleyour inventory may show that you are overstocked on certain lines,—alteration plans may necessitate reducing stock-removal-early season-late season-hot spell-cold spell-wet spell, etc., all these are valid reasons for reducing prices and conducting sales. You can easily conduct such sales as the following: A Clearance Sale of all holiday goods from December 26 to January 1. Mark everything at half price. Get what you can for the left-over holiday goods rather than carry them over until the next holiday season, when new styles and designs will eliminate the possibility of selling your carried-over goods.

If you take stock in January, run an After-Inventory Sale in February. Work off all the slow sellers disclosed by the inventory. Don't think of profit on these goods. Get what you can for them. Anything at all is better than to continue carrying them. They occupy space which should be devoted to quick-selling goods. The spring is a good time to conduct a sale featuring house cleaning aids, disinfectants, rubber gloves, sulphur candles, moth balls, cedar camphor, paint cleaners, varnishes, paints and oils, wall paper, and other necessities pertaining to the house cleaning or moving season. The fall is an appropriate season for a sale on hotwater bottles, rubber goods, school supplies, stationery.

Run an Anniversary Sale every year, featuring several departments of your business and have a good leader in each department. Give an appropriate souvenir to each purchaser during anniversary week. If you carry a large line of warm weather goods a Warm Weather Sale may be launched.

is better not to have too many sales during the year, the public might lose interest in them.

The object of special sales is to attract customers to your store. Once there your sales force is counted on to sell them many goods other than those they came for. Furthermore, these sales help to reduce your stock and close out poor sellers. Do not make too many leaders, especially if you are marking them at "less than cost." A good brand of some wellknown article sold at "less than cost" is a great drawing card. Never sell these leaders at cost-mark them either below cost or at a small profit. The writer knows a furniture dealer who drew tremendous crowds to his store every month by offering staple articles below cost. One month he would sell hassocks for ten cents that cost him twenty-five centsanother month a chair at about half of what it cost him— the next month a table-then a tabourette—a wash boiler— clothes reel, etc., offering every article as a special at a price way below cost. He said he could afford to lose money on them on account of the publicity feature and the extra sales made to the customers attracted by the specials.

When you make a cut on any staple article make it big enough to create a sensation. A small cut in price is not attractive any more. The public is educated to big slashes in prices on leaders. If you cut prices on damaged or soiled goods, state it in your ads. If you have, for instance, a big lot of fifty-cent stationery that has become finger-marked, fly-specked, or soiled, and you cut it to twenty-nine cents a box, tell the public in your ads. just why you cut it. You can buy a line of "seconds" from some large jobbing houses who make a business of supplying such goods. Tell the public how it happens that you can sell them so cheap. You can buy playing cards "seconds" without the gilt edges and

with a few minor defects, and work up a big sale on them among the different clubs and fraternal orders, by selling them at $1.00 to $1.25 per dozen, regular twenty-five cent playing cards. Always tell how you are able to offer them at such a price.

PLANNING SPECIAL SALES.-Special sales should be carefully planned in advance. Window cards, price tickets, store cards, must be prepared. Window displays and interior displays planned. Special business bringing ads. to be written. A special write-up by local papers should be solicited. The clerks should be made acquainted with the terms of the sale, the kind of goods, the reasons for the sale. Sales in the big department stores are planned as carefully as war maneuvres in times of peace, or as military campaigns in time of war. Everybody connected with the store must be keyed to the highest point of enthusiasm for the sale and the genuineness of its offers. Special literature should be sent to your mailing list. If you cannot conduct a sale in this manner, you had better not attempt a sale at all. You must arouse the enthusiasm of the buying public before your sale will be a

success.

You can offer all kinds of combination offers, especially on your own goods. A bottle of your own tooth powder with every twenty-five cent tooth brush-a cake of toilet soap with every ounce of seventy-five cent perfume—a box of talcum powder with every fifty-cent sponge-six souvenir post cards of your town with every thirty-five cent box of stationery. A fancy ten-cent birthday card inserted on the first page of every seventy-five cent post-card album-a pocket cigar lighter with every box of 100 cigars-a dressing comb with every seventy-five cent hair-brush, etc. A pharmacist known to the writer has special cardboard boxes made to hold four or five of his own specialties, then he makes a special price on the whole outfit at the time of his Anniversary Sale. He said he had a big success with this scheme.

The variety stores who do not advertise in the papers appropriate three per cent. of their annual sales to buying

"leaders" which they sell at a loss. A store doing a $12,000 a year business will spend $360 a year for tea pots, coffee pots, enameled ware, china ware, curtains, which they will run as specials for ten cents and which cost them nineteen to twenty-five cents. These goods in constant use in the many homes help to advertise that variety store as a good place for bargains.

ADVERTISING SPECIAL SALES.-The advertising of a special sale requires close attention. Run the first ad. in a big space, telling the reason for your sale, the money to be saved by it, the preparations you have made for it. The next ad. can be cut down and be devoted to telling how the "sale is now going on" and what a success it is. The third ad. should announce that only a couple of days remain to take advantage of this big sale and urging them to be sure and come in before the sale closes. A week is about the right length of time for a sale in a pharmacy. If you try to extend it to two weeks it falls flat, dies out, makes the store dead. Stop it at the end of the week, then make people try to forget it by changing your window and interior displays and bringing out new goods to attract their attention.

With the various side lines carried in pharmacies nowadays, there are plenty of opportunities to make special sales, and to make them pay. You must have a reason and you must explain your reason. The public is skeptical as to selling goods at cut prices without reason. Tell them why you do it. Whenever a department store has a sale on any certain line of goods which they have bought on a big "scoop," they publish the letter from the party from whom the goods were purchased, showing their acceptance of the department store's offer of forty cents on a dollar. When they have a special offer on Oriental Rugs they publish the cablegram from their foreign buyer stating what a valuable lot of rugs they are and how he happened to buy them at such a low figure.

Take the public into your confidence when conducting these special sales. If your competitor conducts a sale about