December, 1922 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



771 



liave ji;oue under completely. A few still 

 striiiTffle on, formally carrying out the rou- 

 tine of receiving the honey of the member- 

 producers, and of disposing of it in what- 

 ever way nets an approximation to the mar- 

 ket price. This year it may go to the X & Z 

 Honey Company; next year ABC, Inc., may 

 get it. These kinds of organizations are but 

 carry-along affairs, with from ten to a hun- 

 dred dollars dues a year, and a fifth of a 

 cent more per pound for the honey handled. 



Some co-operatives make a big thing of 

 the advantage derived from special dis- 

 counts on supplies. Pool your orders, they 

 say, and you save from five to twenty per 

 cent. It sounds like a gold brick. It is — as 

 far as getting the percentage off is concern- 

 ed. But the pooled order very frequently is 

 placed where the original list price of sup- 

 plies is from five to twenty per cent higher 

 than it should be in the first place. I have 

 run short of containers and have bought 

 them through direct ordering cheaper than 

 I obtained a first lot through a pooled order. 

 This is not a knock at the co-operative ideal, 

 but is merely cited to show that many of 

 our associations are not operating on a re- 

 sult-producing basis. 



The Eight Direction. 



Any form of activity must have a defi- 

 nite goal. Otherwise it will appear in action 

 like a basket of June bees dumped on a 

 board with no hive in sight. A co-operative 

 association should have a definite purpose 

 for its existence; otherwise it resolves itself 

 into an annual picnic trip. Live, wide-awake 

 beekeepers must study how to market their 

 honey as well as, say, how best to increase 

 their yard without draining their honey 

 crop. One is equally as important as the 

 other. What good is a crop of fine honey 

 stored in the honey-house if it must be 

 given away in the end to one of a horde 

 of speculators clamoring at the door and 

 singing, in unison, "Three cents per 

 pound"? Producers already recognize that 

 in numbers there is advantage, but they are 

 not arming themselves with modern weap- 

 ons. 



What the Middleman Now Is Doing. 



It is beyond a doubt that the middlemen 

 are performing practically all the functions 

 of marketing honey. That is, it is through 

 the middlemen that the largest proportion 

 of all the honey produced in or imported 

 into the United States is passed on to the 

 ultimate consumer. By middlemen, herein 

 used, are meant wholesale buyers and pack- 

 ers. Retailers are considered in another 

 class. These middlemen buy directly from 

 the producers; they store the various lots 

 of honey; they repack it; they frequently 

 put it up for market under a trade name; 

 they drum the retail trade for an outlet of 

 their branded product; they often influence 

 the resale price to the ultimate consumer. 



M;inv producers attempt to perform those 

 functions for themselves. They market 

 their own honey. They do it, I believe, be- 



cause iliey find the additional profit attract- 

 ive. With some live-wire men, this method 

 has proved successful. But the majority of 

 beekeepers have neither the time nor the 

 inclination to undertake the marketing of 

 their ware. If they find themselves with 

 time to spare, they usually prefer to pro- 

 duce more and leave the specialized job of 

 distril)uting to those more experienced and 

 more desirous of the task. 



The Open Door for Producers. 



There is but one course for producers to 

 follow if they ever wish to see more of the 

 retail price of honey flow into their own 

 pockets. They must market their honey 

 themselves. They need not, however, do it 

 individually. Small groups of producers 

 might well band together, as a start toward 

 future consolidation, and place upon the 

 market a branded product. But in doing 

 so, foresight in one respect is absolutely nec- 

 essary. Branding a commodity and placing 

 it upon the market distinguishes the goods 

 so branded, educates people to call for it, 

 and in this way creates a demand for it. To 

 have ten or a dozen different brands in one 

 section of a state would tend to lessen the 

 effectiveness of any one. 



The solution to this difficulty is this: 

 There should be one great brand under 

 which certified honey of a state or section 

 is marketed; under this general trade-mark, 

 if it is found necessary or desirable, sub- 

 differentiation may be placed upon the label. 

 Such sub-differentiation must not detract 

 from the impressiveness or dominance of the 

 general trade name. 



The Necessity for Differentiation. 



Little can be hoped for in advertising hon- 

 ey as honey. A shirt factory does not ad- 

 vertise just shirts. It advertises ABC 

 shirts or X Y Z shirts, as the case may be. 

 The factory knows that to stimulate the de- 

 mand for a shirt as a shirt may not return 

 that particular factory one sale in a hun- 

 dred. But to puff and pat on the back 

 ABC shirts will ultimately turn many 

 shirt buyers to try the new factory's goods. 



The same rule applies to honey, with two 

 or three minor exceptions. The individual 

 producer mav have fair success, in his nar- 

 row circle, by advertising his name on his 

 label, but for the best results, county, state 

 and sectional co-operation of the right na- 

 ture only can brinfr about a honev market- 

 ing scheme that will stand the test of time. 



Avoid the Snags of the Past. 



No country in the world has succeeded 

 better with co-operative enterprises than 

 England. Indeed, the practice has so popu- 

 larized itself that today there is springing 

 UP competition among co-operative chains. 

 This leads to the observation that England 

 has passed through the stages of co-opera- 

 tive expnnsion, and has experienced the pit- 

 fnlls and the accelerators of this form of 

 marketing. A complete tabulation here is 

 impossible, but among those that stand out 

 (Continued on page 811.) 



