DigI'Duno 
PUBLISHED BY 
WAYLAND DAHLIA GARDENS 
e.r.Ryno, Prop. 
Wayland, Michigan 
SEASON CF 1938 
A good Sales Department and a 
poor Collection Department make 
just about as painful a combination 
in a business as do Inflammatory 
Rheumatism and St. Vitus’ Dance in 
an individual. 
Quite often some flower lover 
tells us about the kick she gets out 
of her dealings and correspondence 
with J. D. Long, of Boulder, Colo. 
Mr. Long is an expert letter writer 
and seems to have the knack of mak¬ 
ing his customers feel that they are 
dealing directly with the “big shot” 
and that every order is receiving his 
personal attention. This knack is al¬ 
most a lost art in these days of big 
business, and we’ll wager that “J. D.” 
holds his customers year after year 
—^the biggest factor in the success 
o'f any mail order concern. 
And, by the way, this specification 
in Mr. Long’s order last spring shows 
that he knows how to buy dahlias as 
well as write letters: “Send average 
size, no strings, no big old mother 
roots.” 
During the busy part of the spring 
when we are being flooded with 
orders our wits are usually keenest 
and many priceless selling ideas are 
bound to pop into mind that may 
never come up again. Always make 
a note of these ideas and file them 
away ready to be worked over when 
you get at your catalog in the fall. 
As the lisping cheer leader put it, 
“Come on everybody, put some en- 
thuthiathum in it.” A big stock of 
ideas will give you that “enthuthi- 
athum” and that’s what puts life in 
your copy. 
None of our customers can afford 
to overlook the psychological factor 
in his advertising. The cumulative 
effect of monotony, the power of 
alliterative titles and headlines to 
attract attention, the varying of dis¬ 
play through combining Roman and 
script forms, the mental effect of 
color, the pyramiding of price dis¬ 
plays, etc., are all points that should 
to considered in preparing your ads 
and advertising matter. 
One of my friends was copy writer 
for a large patent medicine concern. 
He stammered worse than Ambrose 
and it was his custom to walk the 
floor and dictate his ads to two sten¬ 
ographers, each of whom got as 
much as she could of his speil, after 
which he would rewrite his copy and 
shape it up for the composer. One_ 
day one of the advertising repre-' 
sentatives broke in on him just as 
he was in the midst of his dictation 
and got thrown out. A few minutes 
later after he had partially calmed 
down, I happened to drop in and he 
said, “C-C-C-Come on in R-R-R-Ryno, 
b-b-by G-G-God we’ve j-j-just had a 
r-r-riot.” Mob or crowd psycholo^ 
demands that a leader be in a riot 
mood, but always well under control. 
In WHAT ABOUT RADIO, by 
Kenneth M. Goode (Harpers, 246 
pages, $2.75) we note, “One study 
of radio advertising, from its incep¬ 
tion through 1934, found only fifty 
which were sales successes.” 
We have always felt that the plant 
and equipment of a business reflect 
to a very great degree the quality 
of its product; and we have there¬ 
fore made every effort to have every¬ 
thing about our place the best that 
money could buy. Our warehouse is 
of concrete and steel construction 
built especially for storing dahlias, 
our propagating house and cold 
frames are of the best Lord & Burn¬ 
ham construction, and we use Myers’ 
pumping equipment, Skinner and 
John Rust irrigation outfits, Gardex 
hand tools, etc., and so on through 
every detail, even to paper and 
boxes used in packing our product 
and in our effort to give our custo¬ 
mers the very finest stock that can 
be produced. 
Most of our customers have their 
catalogs printed by the A. B. Morse 
Co. For your benefit we will say 
that Mr. Stanley Morse spent two 
days at our place last fall taking 
natural color photos of the leading 
varieties, and we believe his nega¬ 
tives are available ’‘for your catalog. 
The use of color illustrations will do 
more than anything else to boost 
your dahlia sales. 
During the packing and shipping 
season we have many odd lots of 
roots in surplus too small to admit 
of any special sales effort. From 
these odd lots we make up special 
sets of four dahlias, each set com¬ 
prising one root of each Art, Ball, 
Cactus and Decorative type, each in 
a different color, thus presenting a 
complete range of types and colors 
in each set. The four roots are stamp¬ 
ed A, B, C, and D, to indicate type, 
and packed in one wrapper with 
label indicating contents. This is 
packed in a strong set-up box, size 
I^%x2%x5l^ inches, with cultural 
directions included, the complete 
package weighing less than 8 ounces 
so it will go as third class mail for 
4c to any part of the United States. 
We supply these sets in units of 25, 
no orders for less than 100 accepted, 
at a special price of 11c per set, or 
we will mail them direct to your cus-^ 
tomers postpaid at 15c per set. 
We suggest that you offer this set 
at 50c, and you will find it the best 
special feature you ever offered 
either in your regular catalog, or in 
your mid-season follow-up, or as a 
special radio offer, because it really 
gives your customer a bigger value 
than you could possibly sell them in 
the regular way for much less than 
double the price. 
Orders for this item must be placed 
by Dec. 1st., as we have to buy our 
set-up boxes early and in quantities 
to meet our requirements only be¬ 
cause of the large amount of storage 
space they take up. 
We still believe a mid-season 
broadside is one of the most profit¬ 
able pieces of advertising you can 
send out. One of our customers sold 
nearly tv/o thousand collections of 
dahlias from 100,000 of such broad¬ 
sides sent out last spring—approxi¬ 
mately ninety roots per thousand. 
When you consider what it means 
to sell a million dahlias a year and 
every one of these through the legit¬ 
imate trade, you will appreciate the 
fact that we must do everything in 
the power of man to help customers 
sell dahlias to their patrons. _We live 
with our business, eat with it, sleep 
with it, and have no other purpose 
than to make it a success. This dili¬ 
gence is all for you, because without 
your success in selling dahlias, we 
cannot succeed. 
Mark Twain said that when he 
was a boy of 14, his father was so 
ignorant that he could hardly stand 
to have the old man around; but 
when he got to be 21, he was aston¬ 
ished at how much the old man had 
learned in seven years. 
w 
means 
to you 
Iff 
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