202 FRITZ BAHR'S COMMERCIAL FLORICULTURE 



but as long as you have to buy for your own use, whatever you retail 

 will help pay for what you use yourself. I think that is a good way 

 to look at it, and if you have to send a man to plant the bulbs, 

 there again is a margin of profit, or should be, and you also are 

 reasonably sure that your customer will be well pleased with the 

 show of flowers for the money spent. 



Special Schemes for Boosting the Bulb Business 



In every town, no matter how many bulbs are shipped in from 

 the large cities, there is always a chance for the local florist to sell 

 more and make it a paying side line. It is just a matter of going 

 out after orders, and not sitting down until they happen to come in. 

 Every retail grower with a little store for the selling of cut flowers 

 and plants should make it his business, when the first Freesias and 

 Paperwhites arrives to start his display of bulbs and, as the Dutch 

 bulbs arrive, to keep on adding to the assortment. Even if you can 

 display them only in new, clean, 10- or 12-in. bulb pans, each nicely 

 labeled, you can make them attractive. Get a few colored photos 

 or pictures of some of the difl'erent sorts, have some low dishes filled 

 with pebbles and Paperwhite Narcissi, a basket of Chinese Sacred 

 Lilies, a few extra-size Dutch Hyacinths in glasses; get a few photo- 

 graphs of beds of Tulips or Hyacinths in bloom; put a weekly ad 

 in your home town newspaper ; enclose with your monthly statements 

 a neat folder ; have the clerk in the store call attention to the display 

 of bulbs on hand ; talk bulbs to those who buy flowers, and you can- 

 not help but take orders and sell stock. 



The more bulbs are planted in your town, no matter where they 

 come from, the more will be sold the following year, and if you are 

 in the retail business you should sell them. What is the difference, 

 whether you grow them on yourself and sell the flowers, or seU the 

 bulbs, as long as you make a fair margin of profit, provided the one 

 doesn't interfere with the other? Don't be under the impression 

 that a customer who purchases three dozen Paperwhite bulbs for 

 inside flowering will buy just that many less flowers from you during 

 December; no, it is usually just the opposite — she wiU buy more. 

 And if she wants Paperwhites and you don't seU them to her, some- 

 body else will. Sell where there is a chance to sell; the man who 

 hangs his head and finds fault because so many bulbs are shipped into 

 his town from the outside, usually has himself to blame. 



Forget about the other fellow; make a display, advertise and 

 back it up with good bulbs, and a reasonable price; push and then 

 push some more. Do that and before long the result will be that 

 more bulbs than ever wiU be sold in your town, more peopl&"will be 

 wanting them, and you will, as I have, come to the conclusion that 

 there is money in handling them. 



