t 



CALIFORNIA AVOCADO ASSOCIATION 



35 



green things. The people used to cut them open with a hatchet and take 

 the seeds out to take home to the children to play with," You will prob- 

 ably have advertising problems and I believe, from what I know, that 

 you can carry this out successfully. It is probable that if I were going 

 to do this, I would figure that as the production increased you should 

 start advertising in Los Angeles and San Francisco and work out from 

 these points near the center of production, as fast as the increasing pro- 

 duction makes it necessary. 



I think it is very important in your marketing arrangements that 

 you bear in mind that you should make very careful selection of tne 

 people who represent you and are going to handle your products. It 

 would be a very grave mistake to go into a city of one hundred thou- 

 sand and attempt to place avocados with every one in that market who 

 is handling perishable commodities. I know that in every city there 

 are celery houses; there are other houses that are known as orange 

 houses, which handle nothing practically but oranges and apples; and 

 there are other houses that handle everything. You must show the 

 party who handles your products that there is a future and a profit 

 in them, and that you intend to put out a grade of goods that will 

 enable him to build up a business. 



I don't know what your present package for shipping avocados is. 

 A great deal of care should be given to this. It must be a package that 

 will meet the necessity of the fruit itself and it must be something of 

 a size that will admit of its proper handling by the jobber. Now the 

 old Spanish Valencia case was a great big box about the size of a coffin, 

 that held three packages of oranges. That was a package one couldn't 

 handle and distribute in the by-ways of the country, as we have the 

 standard California box. There are things of this kind that are very per- 

 tinent in helping to build up your business. 



We have a marketing problem that may not be greatly dissimilar to 

 the avocado, and that is marketing the California grapefruit. There are 

 a great many varieties, you all know, of California grapefruit. There are 

 only a few varieties commercially profitable, and grapefruit people are 

 now going through a period of changing their varieties to those com- 

 mercially satisfactory and that can be commercially sold. We have 

 found that Florida competition on our grapefruit has practically confined 

 our grapefruit to this coast. We possibly don't raise as good a fruit 

 as they do in Florida, but anyway, we have a problem of increasing the 

 consumption that is possibly similar to the one you will encounter. 



To be a successful industry, a product must be placed within the 

 reach of the middle class, and your problem is to work out the way of 

 doing this. It is not the problem of selling a limited product to a class 

 of trade who are demanding more than you have, but it is a constructive 

 problem which must be built up on what is fundamentally the right lines 

 of distribution. With the proper people in charge of your business, I 

 can see no reason why you should not have success and build up a busi- 

 ness that will be a great one for California. 



As I heard the food elements of the avocado discussed, it seemed 

 to me that you have a wonderful field. With the increased cost of all 



