14 
BULLETIN 394, I T . S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
by the table — a fact which many merchants overlook. The most suc- 
cessful stores confine their purchases to a few reliable firms, rather 
than scatter their orders among too many wholesale houses. In fact, 
one store on the verge of bankruptcy ascribed its failure in large part 
to this practice, since, in time of difficulty, it could claim but little 
support from its numerous creditors. Among the many objections 
to scattered buying are : (1) Greatly increased and useless office work : 
(2) divided support of the wholesalers; (3) excessive buying and 
danger of overexpansion ; (4) too great diversity of stock; and (5) 
loss of advertising opportunity afforded by standard lines. 
Table IV. — Practice in purchasing. 
Question. 
No. re- 
porting. 
Low. J High. 
I 
Ayer- 
age. 
Yes. 
Xo. 
Largely from salesman 
• 43 
19 
24 
27 
From catalogue houses 
21 
From manufacturers 
19 
11 
22 
$1,500 
$35,000 
$12.. 126 
All orders reduced to \yritrns: 
10 
39 
30 
Inyoices checked systematically 
2 
It is interesting to note that only 27 stores believed that they 
bought at the lowest price, while II said positively that they bought 
at a disadvantage. The reasons given were: (1) Inability to take 
advantage of discounts, and (2) in a few cases, discrimination on 
the part of wholesale houses against the cooperative store. The 
former handicap is to be traced generally to such causes as insuffi- 
cient original capital, tying up of capital in accounts receivable, over- 
investment in slow-moving or dead stock, loss of capital through 
bad management, etc. On the latter point a few stores asserted that 
they were sometimes discriminated against in the prices they were 
compelled to pay; that they were not given equal credit privileges 
with private and. corporate enterprises; and that they were refused 
certain lines of goods at any price. Credit men say that this obtains 
only when the store has unsatisfactory credit rating or record and 
when cut prices and discounts are allowed on fixed-price goods. 
SELLING. 
As shown in Tables V and X, the annual sales of the stores under 
consideration ranged from $7,500 to $623,703. with an average ap- 
proximating $88,000. Table X includes only 35 out of the 60 stores 
visited during the survey, and it will be noticed that of these 5 were 
unable to give sufficiently complete data for a statistical estimate 
of their financial success. 
