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An Army of Dollars will Surrender to the Florist whose 

 Campaign is Prosecuted with Vis^or the next two weeks 



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gAN you look back to Christmas of 1907, the panic 

 H yearf The experience then gained is valuable now 

 — more valuable than it has been in the seven lucky 

 years that have passed. Not that this is another 

 panic year — far from it! But 1907 was a year 

 when general business was dull, when florists as a 

 rule looked forward to Christmas without enthusi- 

 asm — and yet it proved to be, all things considered, probably 

 the best Christmas the trade ever has enjoyed. 



The Christmas of 1907 was a bad one for jewelers, for 

 furriers and for dealers in other costly gift articles. Although 

 florists generally were taken more op less by pleasant surprise, 

 it proved an unusually good Christmas — the beat ever up to 

 that time — for dealers in plants and cut flowers. Look in jj 

 back, after the rush was over, the reason seemed clear: People 

 who in prosperous years 

 bought expensive Christ- 

 mas gifts, in the off year 

 bought flowers — "mes- 

 sengers of sentiment" not 

 costly as compared with seal 

 coats and diamond rings. 



What was one man 's loss was 

 another man's gain and it may 

 turn out so again this year if 

 what we hear of the early 

 Christmas business in other 

 lines holds good to the end. 



Business. Improving. 



General business rapidly is 

 recovering from the shock it re- 

 ceived when Europe went to 

 war. Bight now the business 

 sitaation simply is a state of 

 mind — the loss of confidence 

 may be quick, but its return 

 is slow. By Christmas week 

 business may be normal with 

 other lines, in which event flo- 

 rists will get their share, but 

 if trade still is slow with the 

 <liamond merchant it may be 

 all the better for florists. 



Anyway, it is time to get 

 busy getting ready. 



About the most unreasonable 

 thing one can expect this 

 Christmas is that the trade 

 is coming without effort. It 

 won 't do it. The man who gets 

 the business will be the one 

 who, like the shrewd general, 

 correctly appraises the strateg- 

 ical position, plans his cam- 

 paign with care, launches his 

 offensive at the psychological 

 moment, and presses home his 

 advantage with the buyers. 



To do business at Christmas 

 — ^more so this Christmas than 

 usual — it is necessary to have 

 something to sell. Preparations 



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A Christmas Panel Decoration of Prepared Foliages. 



must be made. And having arranged for supplies is not enough. 

 Display is essential. The flower store that gets the transient 

 business will be the one that puts up the best front, not neces- 

 sarily the flashiest front, but the most seductive showing. 

 That's where skill counts. 



Then comes the no less important matter of reminding the 

 public of the special appropriateness of flowers as gifts and 

 of one's own preparedness to supply the demand. After years 

 of waiting for customers to come to the door, florists the last 

 few years have awakened to the fact that people can be drawn 

 to the store, or to the telephone, which is the same thing, by 

 carefuUy prepared advertising. It has been discovered that 

 the florist who combines high class stock, high class equipment, 

 high class service and high class advertising is the one who is 

 making the most rapid progress in expanding his sales and his 



profits. It has been found 

 that the man who pro- 

 vides the first three but 

 leaves out the fourth con- 

 comitant is going forward or 

 back only as his whole neigh- 

 borhood changes; that he is the 

 football of fortune rather than 

 the master of his own destiny. 

 There still are many florists 

 whose only advertising is the 

 show window, but the more pro- 

 gressive are employing the more 

 far-reaching methods. Page 

 ads in the daily newspapers fre- 

 quently are used, but not so 

 often that they have ceased to 

 excite remark. 



Some Good Ways. 



For the florist who is located 

 far to the side of the city, 

 where a large percentage of the 

 people never go, newspaper ad- 

 vertising is costly unless he can 

 sell by telephone. To a florist 

 in a residence district there are, 

 however, many other means of 

 attracting attention. One of 

 the best is the beautiful mailing 

 cards the publicity specialists 

 now offer, as these can be sent 

 to a selected list of customers 

 and well-to-do prospective cus 

 tomers. This idea can be varied 

 to suit any situation or plan. 

 It can be worked into an invita- 

 tion to visit a holiday flower 

 show in the store, sent out in 

 imitation of wedding cards, or 

 it may take the form of a letter 

 urging that purchases be made 

 a certain day or morning, while 

 the selection is unbroken. 



These methods, too, are open 



to the downtown florist, whose 



store is accessible to the ma- 



■ jority of the Christmas shop- 



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