20 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[October i, 1908. 



of character to act on his own judgment and sufficient backbone 

 to stick out for a fair profit and your established export terms. 

 I shall take the liberty of quoting on this point from a "Report 

 Upon the Conditions and Prospects of British Trade in Canada," 

 by Richard Grigg, special commissioner of the advisory committee 

 of the British Board of Trade on commercial intelligence: 



"To send a son or nephew not long from school on a trip to 

 Canada, which is designed to combine pleasure, education, and 

 business, is admirable as far as the two first objects are con- 

 cerned, and useless or worse than that as regards business. The 

 men who go out for business purposes should be thoroughly 

 competent and able to speak with sufficient authority at home to 

 command attention for the lessons they learn." 



The man who goes should know it all when he returns. Be 

 prepared for a stiff expense account. The "foreigner" is "had" at 

 all turns. You or your man represents a big house — the farther 

 away it is the larger it must look. Entertaining cuts a large figure 

 in some countries, and when the country is reached special clothing 

 may be required and only procurable at high figures. Suppose 

 it is decided that you shall go yourself. 



What Shall Be Your Prices? 



In shoes you can readily obtain the prices of the large exporters 

 of your country, and although your goods may in your opinion be 

 much better you will, I think, find that you cannot with your 

 unknown line obtain at first prices much greater than those of 

 the other makers unless you give a long exclusive agency to one 

 buying house in a country, and that without any guarantee of 

 quantity to be purchased. I had the pleasant experience in one 

 country of being told by several that my line, which had been 

 known there for some years, was the best on the market, "but 

 a little high in price." I have often wondered, aside from the 

 merits of the goods, whether the "little higher" price had not 

 something to do with the esteem in which the goods were held. 

 Determine at what price you can profitably sell your goods net 

 and then base your selling price and commission upon this figure, 

 having the prices of the country in mind. This applies to mechan- 

 icals as well as shoes, but in mechanicals your prices may vary 

 from those of others more greatly than they can in shoes. The 

 standards vary so greatly in the former that their profitable 

 distribution is much a question of salesmanship. Be able to give 

 prices in the currency of the country, and net figures. Lists 

 differ in different countries so that discounts do not mean much 

 to the average foreign buyer. Study foreign moneys and the 

 metric system. 



On What Terms Shall You Sell and How Collect? 



Terms are various. I have seen statements showing terms from 

 90 days to twelve months. On twelve months terms and with 

 fair prices you may expect to do more business than if you 

 sell for cash. If you had a salaried staff to sell and collect 

 you might make your terms the same as at home, but when you 

 are distributing from North America the only clean safe way 

 to do business is sight draft against letter of credit or sight draft 

 against documents. I was diffident about quoting such terms at 

 first; it seemed to me worse than C. O. D. It seemed unreason- 

 able that the customer should be expected to pay for the goods 

 before he had even seen them. But all the large importing houses 

 are used to it. In fact, one house I know of insists upon paying 

 cash when they place an order. If weight cannot be exactly 

 computed, they prefer to overpay and have the balance to their 

 credit. 



Useful information to carry is weights of the goods; inland 

 freights, if any, so you can compute cost of laying down at sea- 

 board; bonding charges, if any; cartage charges and cost of 

 consul's certificate. All figure in the cost of laying down, and 

 while freights are not so important on the percentage basis 

 in the rubber business as in some other lines, the information 

 is useful. Remember that the percentage to lay down varies 



materially with the value of the goods and the space they oc- 

 cupy. Cheap suction hose takes a greater percentage to lay down 

 than high-grade valve gum in 6 x 3 x i-inch slabs. Don't pre- 

 pare to quote a definite laying down percentage; this is bad 

 policy when you sell f. 0. b. your factory, but be posted on these 

 percentages so your customer can form his own laid down cost. 



Say Brazil is your objective point. You have procured your 

 letter of credit and accompanying letter of indication and the 

 bank has told you how to keep and use them. You have say 

 i50 in gold on your person. The "sovereign," costing about 487 

 cents, will buy as much as the $5 gold piece costing 500 cents. 

 A passport may be useful. It is easily procured and does not take 

 up much room. Take invoices of your samples in triplicate, each 

 with the proper declaration of the country attached. See that 

 your life insurance policies have endorsed upon them permission 

 to travel to your destination and back. You may be asked to pay 

 a small extra premium. Additional accident insurance may be 

 advisable and you may insure your samples and effects. Have 

 duplicate sets of samples. Send one set ahead and take the 

 other with you. Take a cable code with you and advise the 

 office of it. Keep the office posted. 



Of course you have seen to it that you have secured the best 

 accommodation on the steamer and that your stateroom is on the 

 side from which the prevailing wind comes. And here just one 

 word in your ear on the way to the Grand Hotel Something-Or- 

 Other. They are all "Grand" there. You may be sorry for them 

 all in the country you are visiting, but what's the use of rubbing it 

 in? Kicks against his poor old country w'ill hardly warm up a 

 prospective buyer. If these poor benighted individuals talk Por- 

 tugese or Spanish or whatever, give them credit for at least a 

 little business ability. You may be able to hit off a four hour 

 clip when you are at home, but the man in Rio, for instance, will 

 know how to regulate the pace and you will find his mile an hour 

 will give you more business there than the faster rate. Don't push 

 them too hard. Remember that you are not there to educate 

 them. Say the best you can of their country and deal with them 

 as equals. Let them take their own time. Study them and their 

 form of civilization and you will be traveling along the line of 

 least resistance. Be prepared to drink coffee at all hours in Rio 

 de Janeiro, as you would tea at 4 o'clock in a customer's office 

 in London. By the way, if you think of turning your caravan 

 towards that Mecca of the American manufacturer, dear quiet 

 slow old London, cultivate patience and be prepared to give this 

 most conservative market in the world a try out of at least 

 three years before expecting profitable results, but we are in 

 Brazil, not England. Adaptability is the text of the foregoing 

 sermon. 



Now serious work begins. Certain large exporters have their 

 selling policies defined and will not depart from a set method of 

 distribution. It is well to study local conditions. Frame thor- 

 oughly a policy which in your opinion is best suited to the field. 

 Here is where judgment and decision come in, — with no intimate 

 or business associate to talk it over with, perhaps unfamiliarity 

 with the language. I have made calls of investigation upon 

 merchants, interviewed agents, been followed by agents and im- 

 portuned to leave my goods in the hands of one house for dis- 

 tribution. I have sat around Sydney or Melbourne, a week at 

 a stretch, forming my policy and looking for the best men to 

 carry it out — all the time itching to get down to selling but not 

 offering one dollar's worth of goods, and if that is not hard work 

 I do not know what is. To get the balls rolling is comparatively 

 easy, but to decide where to roll them and who shall keep them 

 rolling when you are back home is another matter. You are 

 spending time and money, lots of both. The responsibility is 

 yours. On you the glory showers or the blame falls a year 

 hence. A wrong move, and you might better have spent the time 

 on the farm and the money on the heathen. 



Just a few words on an agency agreement. You must make 

 the remuneration sufficiently attractive or your agent will devote 



