i 
 
 iil! 
 
 ^mm 
 
 iTiR 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 B 4 4DD 34t. 
 
 ness Side 
 of Optics 
 
 'D.C.Washington' 
 
 (Roe Fulkcrson) 
 
kERKElEY 
 
 .IBRARY 
 
 j i>ij>i^ 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 CIVEN WITH LOVE TO THE 
 
 OPTOMETRY LIBRARY 
 
 BY 
 
 MONROE J. HIRSCH, O.D., Ph.D. 
 
"D. c. washin(;ton' 
 
 (Roi; Fl'i.k.krson) 
 
THE 
 BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 BY 
 
 "D. C. WASHINGTON" 
 
 (ROE FULKERSON) 
 
 I J 
 
 A WORK intended to give 
 ■*^ the young man starting In 
 the optical business, or the old 
 man already in, some plain and 
 common-sense views gained from 
 an optical experience of twenty 
 years. :: :: :: :: 
 
 TOPAZ & KAEMERLE, PUBLISHERS 
 
OPTO;vl£TRY 
 
 To the 
 CASH REGISTER. 
 The tintinnabulation of its bell makes music, the sweet- 
 ness of which the author never hopes to hear equaled till he 
 hears the chorus of the golden haired angels who sing in 
 Paradise. So to it this little book is affectionately 
 DEDICATED. 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 The optometrist who goes in for professionalism; 
 who is in the business for the good of humanity; whose 
 sole desire is to use the public for the demonstration of 
 his pet theories of refraction will find little in this small 
 volume to interest him and would better drop it now. 
 
 It is written by a man who is of the earth earthy, 
 who is frankly in the business for the money there is in it 
 and because out of it he has been able to lay away enough 
 surplus to take care of his old age and yet has been able 
 to say: "This one is on me" when good fellows get to- 
 gether. 
 
 The matter herein contained is not all new ; some of 
 it the author has written before; some of it other fellows 
 have written before; but it is still good for the cash 
 register. 
 
 The author recently passed through his own kitchen 
 and saw Mirandy, the cook, washing the contents of a 
 large basket of spinach. Upon inquiring what she ex- 
 pected to do with a peck of the stuff for a family of three, 
 she replied: "Jest you wait till I bile her down." The 
 following pages are "biled down" experience of twenty 
 years and if some man in the profession is enabled by it 
 to make more money out of his optical establishment than 
 he did before, the author will be satisfied. 
 
The book makes no pretensions to be a literary work 
 at all ; being simply plain facts put down in a plain way. 
 
 The author makes no apology for the frequent ap- 
 pearance of the perpendicular pronoun "I" as this is not 
 literature, but a plain record of personal experiences in 
 the optical business. 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 1913. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 The Business Side of Optics. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I Going Into Business 11 
 
 II Location and Lease 18 
 
 III Furniture 25 
 
 IV Buying Goods 33 
 
 V Insurance 40 
 
 VI Signs and Window Display 46 
 
 VII Advertising 54 
 
 VIII Salesmanship 63 
 
 IX Personality 72 
 
 X Records 79 
 
 XI How To Figure Profits 85 
 
 XII Saving 93 
 
 XIII Partnerships 99 
 
 XIV Employes and Winners 105 
 
 XV Chasing Rainbows 109 
 
The Business Side of Optics 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GOING INTO BUSINESS. 
 
 A fledgling bird's first flight from the parent nest is 
 a small matter when compared with a young optometrist's 
 first venture into the world of business for himself. 
 
 The usual subject of debate is whether he will open 
 his little spectacle emporium in some small town and wait 
 for it to grow up with him, and he grow up with it, or 
 whether he open up in his home city and depend on his 
 friends or the patrons of his former employer for sup- 
 port. A false move of this sort may mean a lifetime of 
 regret. 
 
 No wicked man, who ever saw three aces and a faint 
 heart beaten by a stiff backbone and a ' ' busted flush, ' ' will 
 ever believe there is any hard and fast rule governing 
 business. 
 
 The young man just peeping over the edge of the 
 nest for his first flight in the business world has many 
 things to consider. How about the money end of it! Is 
 he going to make the venture on a narrow margin of cap- 
 ital ? Has he a family to support "? 
 
 These two questions have a bearing because the man 
 who goes into a small but growing town will have longer 
 to wait while he is developing a reputation and will have 
 longer to wait for his business to grow profitable, but in 
 the long run he will make more money ; but he must have 
 
12 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 a reserve large enough to live on while he is waiting and 
 if he has only himself to support he can afford to wait 
 longer. 
 
 The man who opens his business in a city where he 
 is known and where he has already successfully fitted 
 people with glasses, will have the great advantage of 
 being able to do some business from the first day he opens 
 his store, and the chances are that he will be able to make 
 his expenses from the first day he opens his doors, if he 
 is not idiot enougli to put all his ready cash into stock 
 and fixtures. 
 
 The young optometrist who starts business in the 
 city where he has been employed will have less to fear 
 from the first year's experience than he will the second. 
 The first year he is full of hustle and enthusiasm and all 
 his friends are working for him at every opportunity but 
 by the end of a year their enthusiasm has oozed out and 
 he himself is not on the jump like he was the first year 
 and things are liable to sag a little and the business run 
 down. 
 
 Then if he has based his expenditures on his first 
 year's income he is liable to be caught with a bundle of 
 unpaid bills on the tenth of some month and I lay it down 
 as an indisputable proposition that the moment an op- 
 tometrist gets to the point where he cannot take his dis- 
 counts on the tenth of each month he would better sell 
 out and take in floors to scrub ! When he gets to the point 
 where he cannot take that six per cent off his bills he 
 may look any morning when he comes down to his store 
 to find the business undertaker out in front trying to find 
 a crevice in the sidewalk where he can plant his red flag! 
 
 I do not believe that one-half the young men who 
 
g^- 
 
 tf^ 
 
 wmm^m 
 
 
 ^^i 
 
 ■■ wif>-.f-'T * 
 
 ^S:S^fl 
 
 ^H B^^^v/,..' 
 
 r jiiiija5l9|H 
 
 ^^^H »^»*W'> -..' ','( / 
 
 
 ^■„^i»i*^.v^,w 
 
 '--■ 
 
 ■«=j»f'''r 
 
 L^i3 
 
 ^I^IH •^'Tffiikiii 
 
 
 I 
 
 'w 
 
 
 1 
 
 m 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 -^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 « iMi«i<«B«>«i '^l^\ 
 
 
 ^^>*^" 
 
 / ^■" T ,dBiK4 
 
 > 
 
 
 r 
 
 *■■ 
 
 ' -■-■:- ->Yk 
 
GOING INTO BUSINESS 13 
 
 have branched out for themselves made a good move. I 
 believe if they had worked as hard for their former em- 
 ployer as they will have to work for themselves there 
 would have been no occasion for their leaving. 
 
 There is a long, loud wail going up all over this land 
 of the knave and home of the spree for employes who are 
 not merely time servers but men who will take a real 
 interest in the optical establishment where they are work- 
 ing and when men of this sort are found they are not 
 allowed to leave unless they are working for a mercantile 
 myope. The old firm can afford to pay them more than 
 they can hope to earn themselves on the limited capital 
 they are enabled to invest. When such a man leaves the 
 old firm he not only ceases to bring in new business, but 
 he takes with him a part of the business which is already 
 there and it is better business all around for him to stay. 
 
 No man is much of a man who is satisfied to stay for 
 ever as a mere hireling of some other fellow and yet it is 
 a serious matter to give up the certainty of a good salary 
 for the uncertainty of a business career for one's self 
 when the statistics gathered by the large collection agen- 
 cies show that only one man in two hundred who go into 
 business ever makes more than a mere living out of the 
 venture. 
 
 To my mind the solution of this whole matter between 
 a clerk who contemplates going into business for himself 
 and the employer who dislikes to lose him is the profit 
 sharing plan which will be gone into more deeply in a 
 later chapter. 
 
 It is a serious matter for two men, who have been 
 pleasantly associated in business for years, to separate. 
 The wisest plan for both employer and employee is to get 
 
14 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 together and have a long heart to heart talk over the mat- 
 ter before any definite decision is made and see if it can- 
 not be arranged without a separation. 
 
 The fact of the matter is that few employees realize 
 when they are entitled to an increase in salary and it is 
 for want of this that most of them branch out into busi- 
 ness for themselves. 
 
 To the young man who feels that he should have an 
 increase in salary or that he should jump into business 
 on his own hook, let me say that there is no sentiment in 
 business. Sit down with a pad and pencil and see how 
 well off you are. Let us suppose that the net profit in 
 the business where you are employed is ten per cent. Let 
 us suppose that you are making $2,000 a year. To break 
 even on your salary it is a necessity for you to sell 
 $20,000.00 worth of goods every year. On an investment 
 of $2,000.00 you would no doubt feel that the proprietor 
 was entitled to an interest of ten per cent. This would 
 make $200.00 more, so that to hold your job you would 
 have to sell $20,200.00 worth of goods. 
 
 Now figure out what your sales are ; how much of it 
 is due to your personal efforts and then guess in addition 
 how much the house will want for its profit in hiring you 
 and you can come pretty close to the pay you should be 
 getting. Of course, the figures used are wrong — inten- 
 tionally so— but the principle is there. 
 
 Salary is not a question of length of service, it's not 
 a question of how faithful you have been; it is a cold- 
 blooded question of dollars and cents and when you can 
 show your employer that you are making money for him 
 and that he is not giving you your share of it, if he then 
 will not do so, get out and set up your own shop. 
 
GOING INTO BUSINESS 15 
 
 When you have made up youi* mind to go — go at 
 once and go clean. Take no copies of prescriptions, no 
 addresses of former customers, take no advantage of the 
 man for whom you are working, that you would not like 
 to have some other fellow take of you, and you will give 
 him no chance to knock you when you are gone. 
 
 When you are ready to open up there is just one 
 caution, which cannot be included in any of the other 
 chapters, that I want to give you here. 
 
 Cut out the kin and the "in-laws"! It is well nigh 
 impossible for a man to maintain the same discipline with 
 a force of his kinfolks as with those who are in no way 
 related to him and who stand purely on their merits. 
 
 The situation is not improved by a mixture of those 
 who are and those who are not kin and the latter is invari- 
 ably inclined to believe that favoritism is being shown the 
 former and it is a situation which breeds discontent, jeal- 
 ousy and even open outbreaks. Such tilings ai'e the 
 greatest possible injury to any business organization for 
 without harmony success is an impossibility. 
 
 The safest system is not to employ relatives in any 
 branch of the place. It is unfair to both the employer 
 and the employe for any man feels the greatest incentive 
 to hustle when he stands absolutely on his merits and 
 there is no better way to ruin the future hopes of a young 
 man than to put him in business with his father or uncle. 
 If it is desired that he shall succeed to the business let 
 him learn it in some other optical store where he will rise 
 or fall in proportion to what he does rather than to who 
 he is. 
 
 The practice of bringing in relatives is almost uni- 
 versal in the optical business and many optometrists 
 
16 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 have lived to regret it. Right now I call to mind a man 
 who built a big business in a city and later had a mal- 
 content relative, whom he had taken into his store, who 
 later went out and opened a business under the same 
 name and took in thousands of dollars which rightfully 
 belonged to his former employer. 
 
 There was no way to prevent his use of the name as 
 it was his own. This brings us to another point well 
 worth considering. Don't open up business under your 
 own name. I don't know of a less popular piece of advice 
 I could offer to a young man just starting out than this 
 and yet there is no better piece of advice I could offer. 
 
 Select a name for your firm like the Acme Optical 
 Co., for example, and then there is no danger of some 
 other fellow coming along and stealing your advertising 
 and your reputation. We will suppose your name is 
 Jones and that the name of Jones the Optometrist be- 
 comes well known through your good reputation and 
 your advertising. There is no way except by a swift lick 
 with a piece of lead pipe that can keep any other man by 
 the name of Jones from going into the optical business 
 in the same town, whereas the Acme Optical Co. can be 
 copyrighted and may not be used by another man. 
 
 Suppose Mr. King had not called his eye glass the 
 "So Easy" or Mr. Kirstein had not called his the "Shur 
 On." Suppose they had been put out as the Kirstein 
 or the King. There is no law or any other way of pre- 
 venting any man by the name of Kirstein or King from 
 making and marketing an eye glass and taking advantage 
 of the reputation and advertising of these two firms. 
 
 I could name half a dozen incidents of this kind in 
 our own profession which have cost the original house 
 
GOING INTO BUSINESS IT 
 
 thousands of dollars, and one man talked to me for two 
 hours at the convention in Chicago in the vain hope that 
 I could offer him a suggestion to circumvent his own 
 brother who had served him this very trick — and, of 
 course, I had none to offer. 
 
 It is a matter of great personal pride for a yoimg 
 optometrist to see his name in front of his store but he 
 may live to regret it. 
 
 There is yet another reason than the one assigned. 
 Where the name of the proprietor appears on the door, 
 every customer who enters asks to see Mr. Jones person- 
 ally. This may be flattering to Jones but when the place 
 grows large and he cannot personally attend to every cus- 
 tomer it becomes embarrassing. 
 
 Select a name and have it copyrighted before you 
 open your doors for the day may come when you will shed 
 many bitter dollars over the personal pride which made 
 you use your own name as a firm name. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 LOCATION AND LEASE. 
 
 When the young optometrist has fully made up his 
 mind that the time has come for him to launch his own 
 little sliip on the great sea of business, the first proposi- 
 tion he is up against is the question of location. 
 
 Let me say at the outset that I endorse the plan of 
 beginning from the ground up rather than buying out 
 some other optometrist. In nine cases out of ten an 
 optometrist who is willing to sell has little that is worth 
 buying. In most cases the man who has a store for sale 
 has made a failure out of it and your own cliances are 
 better to start fresh than to take up a business corpse 
 and try to resurrect it. 
 
 The selection of a location is without doubt one of 
 the greatest factors in success. First of all go slow. 
 There is plenty of time for you to start, and too much 
 haste may make you lose a valuable stand. 
 
 There are three prime factors in a location. The 
 number of people who pass the store, the "crawl" of the 
 city and the length of the lease. 
 
 If you want to catch fish you must go where there are 
 fish. If you want to sell spectacles you must go where 
 the people are, for it is only people who wear them. As 
 the finest tackle, the most appetizing bait and the finest 
 casting ever done by any ardent disciple of Isaak Walton 
 
LOCATION AND LEASE 19 
 
 will never catch bass in a horse pond, so also the nicest 
 store, the best refracting and the cleverest salesmanship 
 on earth will not sell spectacles on a side street where no 
 one passes. 
 
 Do not allow the low price of rent to allure you off 
 the main line of traffic. Every man, woman and child who 
 passes your door is a possible customer and the only way 
 to tell which of two locations is the better one is to stand 
 a man before each and have him count the people who 
 pass during the hours when your store would generally be 
 open for business. 
 
 A location which is passed by five thousand people 
 per day is worth exactly one-half as much rent as a store 
 which ten t"housand people pass during a similar period. 
 This is as sure as anything can be in this world. 
 
 Should the rent of two locations be practically the 
 same and the number of passers-by be about the same, 
 then the question is whether the people pass in crowds at 
 some one time of day or whether they come by in a steady 
 stream all day long. The latter is better for business. 
 Where they come in one big rush at some certain time of 
 day, like the employes of a big factory or office, there is 
 less chance to catch them than where they are spread over 
 the whole of the day. 
 
 Next should be considered the "crawl" of the town. 
 Every city in the great nation is growing in some direc- 
 tion. The restlessness of America is communicated even to 
 its cities and towns. If you will just think back ten years 
 you will recall that the busiest corner of your own city 
 was in a different location from what it is today, and if 
 you will note carefully you will find the general direction 
 
20 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 of the "crawl" and try to get your store in a location so 
 that the city is working toward you rather than away 
 from you. 
 
 Remember the old Wanamaker adage that "the peo- 
 ple go where the people go," and get as close as possible 
 to the busy part of town. Do not let the fact that there 
 are other opticians in the same block or neighborhood 
 deter you, for it is my belief that if every optician in a 
 city were gathered in one block every one of them would 
 do more business. 
 
 Don't go upstairs! 
 
 The repairing and regular merchandise sales in any 
 optical store should pay all its expenses. If you depend 
 on the sale of new glasses for your profits there is going 
 to be a sad lack of chicken on your home menu ! To get 
 repair work you must be on the ground floor and near the 
 main arteries of traffic, for a man with a pair of broken 
 glasses has no time to fool with climbing stairs and walk- 
 ing to back streets. The fellow who is located right under 
 his nose is going to get the job for, from the customer's 
 point of view, the great item is to get it quickly. 
 
 This very repair work is one of the greatest feeders 
 for an optometrist, for after a man has had a few satis- 
 factory jobs done in a store he is almost sure, some day, 
 to remark that his glasses are getting a little weak, and 
 to have another examination and new glasses on the spot; 
 and then the man upstairs, or on the back street, who 
 originally made his glasses, has lost him forever. 
 
 The man upstairs loses all opportunity to sell opera 
 glasses, field glasses, thermometers, meteorological 
 instruments, readers, microscopes, automatic holders, and 
 
LOCATION AND LEASE 21 
 
 all the thousand and one profitable things classed under 
 the general head of optical merchandise, for they are 
 things sold almost entirely through having been shown 
 in the window. 
 
 I know that there are one or two exceptions to the 
 general rule that an upstairs business is not a success, 
 but no one can convince me that these same firms would 
 not have made a far greater success had they been on the 
 ground floor and carried a full line of optical merchan- 
 dise. 
 
 Having gotten in front of the ' ' crawl ' ' of your town, 
 and having selected what seems to you the best location, 
 the next matter to be considered is the length of lease. 
 Of course, where it is possible it is better for any business 
 man to buy his store and settle the question of location 
 for all time, but I do not remember to have ever seen a 
 case where a young man just breaking into business had 
 money enough to do so. So the question of lease comes 
 up and the one thing of all others is to avoid taking a 
 store on a month to month tenancy. 
 
 The landlord never lived who would not raise the rent 
 on a prosperous tenant. Get a lease as long as you pos- 
 sibly can and then have your lawyer go over it and see 
 if it will hold in a court of law. Business men have more 
 trouble over leases than any other one thing, and I would 
 choose the poorer of two locations if the lease on it were 
 longer. Get a five or ten year lease if you can but under 
 no consideration risk your money and your time in a store 
 when you do not know how long you can remain in it. 
 
 In selecting a store that is one or two steps up or down 
 from the sidewalk level, do not take it unless the rent is 
 
22 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 at least one-half less than a store on the street level. 
 People — especially elderly people, with whom we deal 
 largely — will not climb steps to get into a store when 
 there are plenty of others on the street level. 
 
 There is another point to be considered in a lease 
 which seems a little odd. Do not allow your landlord to 
 reduce your rent unless you first have a new lease under 
 the new terms. I know of one case where a man leased 
 a counter in a big department store at seventy-five dollars 
 a month and was to pay seventy-five dollars a month for 
 five years. He made good from the jump and one fine 
 day the proprietor came along and told him that liis rent 
 was too high and that he was going to reduce it to sixty 
 dollars. The optometrist fell into the trap and paid the 
 sixty dollars — and was immediately served with notice to 
 vacate, as the payment of the check and its acceptance by 
 the proprietor constituted a breaking of the lease and the 
 optometrist was set out into the street. Then the depart- 
 ment store opened an optical department of its own at the 
 same counter. 
 
 Don't let any real estate agent convince you that you 
 can do business on the "wrong" side of the street. Every 
 business street in the country has a "right" and a 
 "wrong" side and the extra money you will have to pay 
 out in advertising will more than offset the extra rent 
 you will have to pay on the ' ' right ' ' side. 
 
 Don't take one-half of a store where the lease is in 
 the name of the other man and you are a sub-tenant ! This 
 sort of a business is like a man smoking in a powder mag- 
 azine or a small boy sitting on a tombstone eating green 
 apples and singing "Nearer My God to Thee." It's flirt- 
 ing with the undertaker. 
 
LOCATION AND LEASE 23 
 
 If you buy another man's business don't pay him a 
 cent for his so-called "good will"; it's not a marketable 
 product. If a place is for sale the good will is not worth 
 much. I know one man who paid one thousand dollars for a 
 lot of prescriptions which covered fifteen successful years 
 of a business where the proprietor had died, and he car- 
 ried them to his place three blocks away and notified the 
 people that he had them and the return orders from them 
 did not pay for the expense of sending out the notices. 
 
 When you rent a store there are two things which 
 must be discounted fifty per cent. First the time you will 
 get into it. Any experienced man will tell you that the 
 only time to do papering, painting, floor fixing and all 
 that sort of thing is before a stick of furniture is in the 
 place. I tell you from experience that you must give 
 your mechanics at least thirty days after they tell you 
 the store will be ready or you will have paint and paste 
 spilling on the hats of your lady customers. 
 
 Next, last and most important of all the don'ts is, 
 don't think for a moment that you can sit down in ad- 
 vance and figure out what it is going to cost you to open 
 a store. No man can do it and after several attempts I 
 tell you honestly that the only safe way is to figure care- 
 fully — and then add exactly fifty per cent ! I know you 
 think this is too much! I know you don't believe a word 
 of it, but it is true just the same and it has not been six 
 months since I made my last move for life and I tell you 
 that the move from one store to another cost me at least 
 fifty per cent more than I could possibly figure on. When 
 I went over my check book then I couldn't believe it and 
 even now don't know where the money went, but the hole 
 
24 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 is in the bank roll just the same, and to a young man just 
 starting out on a limited capital this is of vast importance 
 for he may find himself stranded on a fifty per cent under 
 estimate. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FURNITURE. 
 
 When I wrote the above caption to this chapter I 
 was reminded of the small boy who in school was asked : 
 "What is the gender of cat?" He replied: "Show me 
 the cat ! " 
 
 It is very hard to suggest furniture for a store with- 
 out first seeing the store, but the average store is about 
 square, with a depth three times as great as its width, 
 and so we will furnish one of that sort in order that any 
 variations in the real store you are about to open may 
 be changed to suit conditions rather than this ideal store 
 we are now about to fit up. 
 
 Store furnishings and fittings play a much more im- 
 portant part in the success of the new man in the optical 
 business than most people have any idea. If the fur- 
 nishings and fixtures are too elaborate, and too beautiful, 
 they will create the impression in the minds of the people 
 who pass, and who look inside, that the store is a high- 
 priced place and much valuable middle-class trade will 
 pass it by and go to a less pretentious looking establish- 
 ment. 
 
 On the contrary, should the fixtures and cases be too 
 poor looking the very highest class of trade will think it 
 is a cheap shop and will stay out, or, even if they do come 
 in, the optometrist will have a hard time selling high class 
 and high priced goods. 
 
26 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 So I insist that in furnishing an optical store it 
 should be the main object to strike that happy medium 
 between too fine and too poor in order that all classes of 
 people will feel happy in it. Good but not gaudy is the 
 point to be striven after. 
 
 In arranging the ideal store let us first cut off twenty 
 feet from the back end of it. This will answer for the 
 test room and the repair department. If the store be 
 twenty feet wide, as mine is, this will leave an examina- 
 tion room twenty by ten and a repair department the 
 same size. 
 
 I have never partitioned off my shop or my examina- 
 tion room from my store. There are people — especially 
 women — who dislike being taken into a sejjarate room to 
 have their eyes examined, but there is a better reason. I 
 like to have the customers in the front end of my store see 
 that I examine eyes and also see that I grind lenses and 
 do my own work. 
 
 I have recently solved this riddle to my own satisfac- 
 tion. 'While in a furniture store not long ago I noticed 
 that they had small rooms in which to exhibit a bed room 
 suite, or some other articles of furniture, and that they 
 built them out of screens, on the bottom of which were 
 castors, so they could be shifted about at will. I had two 
 similar screens made, one ten feet long by four feet high, 
 and another six feet long by four feet high. The first 
 one separates my examination room from my shop, while 
 the other stands at the end of the work bench and sep- 
 arates it from the store. These screens are on castors 
 and can be readily pushed aside in sweeping or cleaning, 
 and while they are high enough to effectively separate 
 the shop and examination room from the store, yet being 
 
FURNITURE 27 
 
 only four feet high they do not entirely hide either the 
 shop or the examination room. 
 
 They are the best solution of the difficulty I have 
 seen. 
 
 This disposes of the back end of the store. 
 
 The first thing on entering the store should be the 
 repair department, and I have mine so arranged that 
 repair jobs can be taken in and delivered while the cus- 
 tomer is standing. This will enable you to deliver and 
 take in work with much greater rapidity. 
 
 To accomplish this end I had put just inside the door 
 of my store a glass show case, which was made for a 
 glove case and is only sixteen inches across the top, which 
 enables me to reach across it and adjust glasses and my 
 case for repair work is the first wall case when you come 
 into the store, so there is no running to the back end of the 
 room for a job. 
 
 The case of which I speak, and over which I transact 
 most of my business, is one of those deep all glass ones 
 which run all the way down to the floor and on the top 
 glass shelf of it I have chains, automatics, hooks, fancy 
 cases and all that sort of optical merchandise, so that it 
 is right under the eyes of my customers and many sales 
 are made as a result of the customers seeing things which 
 they were not aware they wanted. In other words, it 
 creates an artificial need for these things. 
 
 The lower shelves of this case contain opera glasses, 
 field glasses and a sample line of readers and magnifiers 
 which are thus given a prominent position. I have found 
 that few people come down town deliberately to buy these 
 things and they must be forced on their attention if they 
 
28 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 are sold. This applies particularly to lorgnettes whieb 
 have a prominent place in this first case. 
 
 Behind this case, which is ten feet long, I also have 
 my case of pi-escription cards, where they are easy of 
 access, but of these prescription records we will deal fur- 
 ther in another chapter. 
 
 Next in line along the wall comes the cash register. 
 No man who has ever done business with a cash register 
 will ever be without one thereafter. It saves a world of 
 mistakes, makes it almost impossible to deliver a charge 
 job without a record of it and is a living exemplification 
 of that prayer, "lead us not into temptation." "When I 
 see how some men in our line subject their clerks to 
 temptation the only wonder to me is that there are not 
 more men bounced for "knocking down." 
 
 In line with the show case are two fitting tables — 
 the kind sold by a prominent optical house and illustrated 
 in half the catalogues on your shelves. They have glass 
 tops, which permit a display of frames and mountings 
 and a set of drawers for cases and such things. 
 
 I have two more wall cases on this side of the store 
 and three large mirrors for I have found that there has 
 never lived a woman who does not like to preen in front 
 of a mirror, and I once heard an old store fixture man 
 lay down the law, as follows: "Where you don't need 
 the space, put a mirror," and I believe it is a good one. 
 
 In one of these wall cases I have frames of all sorts 
 in separate drawers and also a lens cabinet with metal 
 drawers, which you vnll also find in your catalogues. My 
 reason for keeping these things up in front is because 
 when I make an examination and take an order I make 
 
FURNITURE 29 
 
 out the shop job envelope and I myself select the mount- 
 ing and the lenses and put them into the job envelope 
 before it is sent to the shop. Then, if there is any break- 
 age, the shop man must come to me for more material 
 and it enables me to keep a better line on the stuff de- 
 stroyed in the shop. 
 
 This finishes one side of the store down as far as 
 the shop, wherein I use benches, motor and all appliances 
 that are in the catalogues of which I have spoken before. 
 I shall not go into the question of shop work as that is a 
 separate proposition and to anyone interested I can only 
 suggest that very valuable information on the subject 
 may be obtained from any one of half a dozen firms who 
 are manufacturing optical machinery. 
 
 In this connection let me also suggest that no more 
 valuable little book has come on the market recently than 
 Pettet's "The Mechanics of Fitting Glasses," which deals 
 with the subject of forms of glasses and their adjustment 
 and no young man just starting into the business can fail 
 to gather valuable information from its pages. 
 
 On the opposite side of my store I have no cases of 
 any sort as I prefer what might be called the "one-sided 
 store." 
 
 Immediately inside the door I have the usual um- 
 brella stand and just back of this a large settee flanked 
 on either side by a chair, and then follows, in turn, my 
 own desk, the typewriter desk, telephone table and a sec- 
 tional book case for catalogues and such things. 
 
 On the wall back of these I have a black, cloth-cov- 
 ered thermometer board on which are displayed all sorts 
 of thermometers, barometers, hygrometers and meteoro- 
 
30 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 logical instruinents in general, for I have found that in 
 common with opera glasses they are things that a want 
 has to be created for. You must keep them in plain view 
 and explain them with care to anyone who seems in the 
 least interested if you hope to build a sale on them. There 
 is no clock in my store. I have found that if you tell a 
 man you will have a job for him in ten minutes he will sit 
 and watch the clock and when the ten minutes are up he 
 will begin to walk the floor like a caged lion in a zoo ; but 
 if you will keep a couple of current comic magazines lying 
 around and keep the clock out of his sight you can keep 
 him for twenty minutes and he will be surprised that you 
 did the work so quickly. 
 
 I have seen a fakir at a fair examine eyes in an open 
 booth with a throat mirror strapiDed around his head; I 
 have seen experts who honestly believed they could cor- 
 rect astigmatism down to a twelfth with a retinoscope in 
 a dark room; I have seen so-called retinoscopic experts 
 declare one case of astigmatism lenticular and the next 
 corneal and never smile; I have seen an old grey beard 
 fit(?) with a simple hand card, cases that the best men 
 in the country had failed to satisfy, and from all this I 
 deduce that every man has his own ideas about refrac- 
 tion and I am not going into the fitting room on this fur- 
 niture proposition at all. All I propose to say is that I 
 have an ophthalmometer, the findings of which I pay no 
 attention to if they disagree with my test case. I have a 
 combined ophthalmoscope and retinoscope which are 
 invaluable for the advance information they give me of 
 refractive conditions and the cataracts and spotted 
 retinas they show me. These instruments I have mounted 
 
FURNITURE 31 
 
 on small tables ■which can be raised and lowered at will 
 and they add much to the looks of the store. 
 
 I also have a test case with which I earn my living ! 
 
 Floor covering is without doubt one of the biggest 
 propositions the optometrist has to face and if a nice 
 polished hardwood floor is used you will find your rugs 
 slipping and your elderly patients falling all over the 
 
 The best thing in my opinion is linoleum. You can 
 buy it in any shade to harmonize with the rest of your 
 fixtures, and you can buy it in any design on earth. If 
 you get the expensive kind it will cost you about three 
 dollars a yard, but in this kind the designs run all the 
 way through the material and no matter how long it is 
 on the floor it never gets dingy. It will wear like iron 
 also and like most other things in the way of furniture 
 and fixtures, ' ' the best is the cheapest. ' ' 
 
 Just one more point and we will leave the subject of 
 fixtures. If there is any place on earth where cleanliness 
 is next to godliness it is in an optical store ! There is no 
 place on earth where dirty windows, dirty floors, unswept 
 corners and such things make such a bad impression as 
 in our business. 
 
 Hire someone especially to clean. Have floors and 
 windows cleaned every day ; have show cases and every- 
 thing in the place dusted; have every sample pair of 
 glasses polished to the limit and every opera glass and 
 barometer wiped off fresh every morning. A lorgnette 
 cannot be sold if the lenses in it are dirty, a dingy opera 
 glass looks a mighty poor thing to a person selecting a 
 wedding present, and the magnifier or reader which is 
 
32 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 decorated with finger prints will be much less interesting 
 to a possible customer than it would be to a detective 
 looking for a criminal. 
 
 My earnest entreaty, once you have the place thor- 
 oughly cleaned, is to at once go to work and — clean it ! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 BUYING GOODS. 
 
 There are just two phases to the buying end of the 
 optical business and these are purchasing the goods and 
 paying the bills. 
 
 The first precaution is that it is better to cry for 
 goods than to cry over them. The smaller the quantities 
 of goods bought the easier it is to pay for them. The 
 prices on all optical goods are the same in half dozens 
 unless you buy in gross quantities and even in these there 
 are only a few articles which can be bought at a sufficient 
 reduction to justify laying in goods in such quantities. 
 Goods lying on the shelves of a properly conducted store 
 have six per cent interest for invested capital charged 
 up against them, and in many cases this interest eats up 
 all the profits of the lower price before the goods are sold. 
 
 There are probably twenty thoroughly reputable job- 
 bing houses advertising in the trade papers in the optical 
 business. The prices of these houses on standard goods 
 are the same. There is not five per cent variation be- 
 tween the highest and the lowest priced man in the lot. 
 This reduces the buying end of the business to a very 
 simple point and my suggestion to any man just starting 
 out in business is to select the nearest good jobber and 
 give him all your business. 
 
 The average small optician buys from five to ten 
 thousand dollars' worth of goods a year. This sum when 
 
34 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 put into the hands of any one man makes the accomit 
 worth while, but scattered around among a dozen men 
 the account is of no particular value to any of them and 
 the optician gets no favors, no particular consideration. 
 
 But when he centers his buying in one house his 
 account is of sufficient value so that the jobbing house is 
 ready and willing to show him favoritism just as you 
 show favoritism to the best family on your own books. 
 
 From time to time opportunities will come for a job- 
 ber to throw a bargain in your direction. He may be 
 clearing out a line of good eases that he will not handle 
 again and is willing to sell them under ordinary prices, 
 and again he may have a chance to buy something him- 
 self at a reduction and in these cases, of course, he throws 
 the favors in the way of the man who pays the most 
 money into his firm. 
 
 There are times in the life of every yoimg man with 
 a growing business when he needs more credit — when his 
 hopes and his realization failed to meet on schedule time 
 and in such an emergency the jobber with whom he has 
 been spending all Ms money will be glad to extend accom- 
 modation to him; whereas, if he deals here, there and 
 everywhere there is no one in particular interested in 
 him, the first signs of weakness on his part would indicate 
 that he might go under and they all jump in to see which 
 can get his money first. The result is that when they all 
 sail down on the weak man he goes down and out under 
 the pressure. 
 
 Select one good man and give him all the business 
 you can and you will find that he will make it worth your 
 while in many ways. 
 
BUYING GOODS 35 
 
 Now, as to the other end of the question. That is 
 the paying of bills. 
 
 The habit of giving the optician six per cent discount 
 off his bills if he pays them ten days after the statement 
 is rendered, is so universal as to be almost invariable. 
 I wonder how many men in the profession know just what 
 six per cent at ten days means. Do you realize that 
 six per cent at thirty days means six times that in 
 twelve months or seventy-two per cent a year, and that 
 six per cent at ten days is just three times that amount, 
 or tivo hundred and sixteen per cent per annumf Did 
 you ever realize that your jobber is offering you just two 
 hundred and sixteen per cent per annum to pay your bills 
 promptly? 
 
 No ancient Shylock, no modern loan shark in his 
 wildest dreams of avarice, ever hoped to get such a rate 
 of interest! No man who has brains in his head can 
 afford to fail to grab it and yet the jobbers tell me that 
 at least one-half the optometrists in the country do not 
 take their discounts!!! Mother of Moses! what's the 
 matter with us ? Are we a set of driveling business idiots ! 
 
 There is not a bank in the country which is not crying 
 for a chance to loan money to reputable business men on 
 their personal notes and yet those men refuse to pay 
 that bank six per cent per annum on money that they 
 might make six per cent on in ten days and have the use of 
 it the other three hundred and fifty-five days of that year 
 for nothing! They will not pay six per cent on money 
 borrowed from a bank when they can use it to pay off an 
 interest charge of two hundred and sixteen per cent! I 
 will grant that this two hundred and sixteen per cent is 
 in theory only, as we only have twelve chances to discount 
 
86 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 each year, but what is the diflference between this sum 
 and the seventy-two per cent which can actually be 
 earned? 
 
 It seems almost impossible that a man can be so 
 myopic as to allow this discount to escape him. 
 
 There is a tendency on the part of all young optome- 
 trists to be lured away by low prices. When a manufac- 
 turer offers you a gold filled frame for three dollars a 
 dozen and another offers you one for six the chances are 
 that you are getting just twice as much gold on one as 
 you are on the other. No matter what the arguments are 
 by the men who are selling them, no matter what they 
 may look like, this is the probable condition and all too 
 late the new buyer of optical goods learns that the sweet- 
 ness of low price has long since gone while the bitterness 
 of poor quality clings forever. Low priced goods do not 
 pay. Let your constant tendency in buying be to buy 
 better things rather than to buy cheaper ones. If you 
 buy the good goods, you will sell them — you will have to 
 do so ! If you buy the poor stuff your tendency will be, 
 as the stuff is cheap, to cut your prices to meet the low- 
 priced man in competition with you and the general ten- 
 dency of your business will be down instead of up. 
 
 Buy standard goods. Goods with a reputation be- 
 hind the maker. There are half a dozen firms in this 
 country manufacturing optical goods of quality so un- 
 questioned, of scientific accuracy so certain, that the 
 name and trade mark on an article is a guarantee of the 
 quality of the stuff. Men who make such goods deserve 
 the patronage of every optometrist who is trying to ele- 
 vate his profession and give his patrons what they pay 
 
BUYING GOODS " 37 
 
 for. Cling to such closer than a brother, for they are, in 
 very truth, your brothers. 
 
 Again, buy the goods which are generally advertised. 
 Do not let any one hocus pocus you into the belief that 
 when you push a generally advertised article you are 
 building up the reputation of the maker rather than your 
 own reputation. It is not true. He is making your sales 
 for you, and every dollar he spends in his general adver- 
 tising is making business for you. If he piles up the 
 sales it is very foolish of you not to be ready and able 
 to supply the demand he creates ! Get on the band wagon ! 
 It is very foolish for a man to swim up stream. It is just 
 as well, and better, to get into the current of good busi- 
 ness created by this great amount of general advertising 
 and gather in the golden dollars which come from it. 
 
 Remember that a small quantity and a large assort- 
 ment of goods is the ideal stock. Buy in small quantities 
 and let the jobber carry your stock for you. This is the 
 only answer to the time-honored question, "Why is a 
 jobber? " He is to carry stock for the wise retailer who is 
 too clever to allow his own shelves to get cluttered up 
 with goods. 
 
 It is all very well for you to take stock and count 
 in your assets, say, three thousand dollars worth of goods 
 on the shelves. It looks very nice on the paper, but 
 just you try to get three thousand dollars out of it and 
 you will find that cashing a three thousand dollar stock 
 is a mighty serious proposition. It's like the boy who 
 had a bull pup which was worth one hundred dollars to 
 a man who was willing to pay one hundred dollars for 
 a bull pup. Your stock is worth three thousand dollars 
 because it cost you that much, but how much would it 
 
38 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 be worth to a man who wanted to buy it? It would be 
 as hard a task to find a man who would be willing to 
 pay three thousand dollars for your stock as to find a 
 man who was willing to pay one hundred dollars for 
 a bull pup. A dollar in a savings bank is worth ten of 
 the dollars you have tied up in useless and unsalable 
 stock. 
 
 There is no doubt but that the greatest difficulty 
 confronting the young optometrist is from keeping his 
 profits from getting all tied up in stock. There is a 
 steady tendency for his stock account to grow and grow 
 till the time comes when he has accumulated a lot of odds 
 and ends that are not salable, but still are carried along 
 from year to year as a paper profit, and no man can pay 
 his bills or buy beer for his pals with paper profits. Let 
 your buying be as little as you can possibly get along 
 with and you will find this wUl answer. 
 
 There is a valuable little booklet entitled, ' ' Scientific 
 Stock Keeping," which can be procured from any jobber, 
 and I would advise every optometrist to get a copy. 
 
 Never buy goods that you have not already money 
 enough in the bank to pay for. Of course you may get 
 it before the tenth of the following month, but there is 
 also a chance that you may not. 
 
 Keep constantly in mind that the clever young chaps 
 who come to see you from the vai-ious optical houses are 
 just like the clever young chaps to whom you are paying 
 salaries. They are hired by their employers for the 
 express purpose of selling you goods, and while I believe 
 it is most unusual in these days of better business for a 
 traveling man to deliberately oversell a customer, yet 
 
BUYING GOODS 39 
 
 they are paid to sell (in many cases paid according to 
 how much they sell), and you must remember this all the 
 time you are doing business with them. 
 
 Just remember, as a parting admonition, that old 
 mercantile aphorism that "It is better to cry for goods 
 than to cry over them." 
 
 Keep in mind that the man who can not take his 
 discounts had better throw up the sponge and go to work 
 for some other fellow, for he has made a mistake in 
 going into business for himself. 
 
 Remember that the man who can take his discounts 
 and does not, is a fool net! 
 
 Buy small and pay prompt and the very men who 
 have pressed you to buy larger will think more of you, 
 and as they think more of you will press you still harder 
 to buy in larger quantities. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 INSURANCE. 
 
 Are yon fully protected from fire! Certainly! you 
 speak up promptly, of course, and insist that any man 
 who would try to do business without fire insurance pro- 
 tection would be an idiot— with which I quite agree. 
 
 Will you pardon the impudence if I put the ques- 
 tion, How do you know you are fully protected? If you 
 signed a ten thousand dollar contract with a man with- 
 out reading it, any one of your friends would say that 
 you had bats in your loft, wouldn't he? Yet it is a 
 safe bet of twenty to one that neither you or any other 
 man you can mention in the optical business has ever 
 read his fire insurance policy. He has simply taken it 
 on faith in the agent who sold it to him, not knowing 
 that there is as much difference in fire insurance policies 
 as there are in lenses. Not one man in ten has the least 
 idea what all the stuif in it means, if he has read it. 
 
 Get yours out and read it over with the agent who 
 sold it to you, and get him to explain what the various 
 clauses mean. It's a better time to do it now before the 
 fire rather than to have it done in a court of law after- 
 wards. 
 
 We will suppose for an example that you have a ten 
 thousand dollar fire insurance policy on your business. 
 In every policy there is what is called "the eighty per 
 cent average" clause. This clause says : "The company 
 
INSURANCE 41 
 
 shall not be responsible for a greater proportion of any 
 loss than the amount the insured bears to eighty per 
 cent of the cash value of the property insured at the time 
 of the loss." Now, what in Sam Hill does that mean! 
 
 It means just this, that eight thousand dollars insur- 
 ance must be carried on a ten thousand dollar business 
 to receive full benefits under this provision in case of 
 partial loss. 
 
 Suppose you carried six thousand dollars insurance 
 on a ten thousand dollar business and sustained a loss 
 of one thousand dollars. This clause says you must carry 
 eight thousand dollars or the policy will cover only as 
 the amount carried bears to eight thousand dollars; if 
 you cari-y six thousand and should carry eight thousand 
 you carry six-eighths, or three-fourths, and so you get 
 three-fourths of the loss, or seven himdred and fifty dol- 
 lars instead of one thousand. Get it? 
 
 In case of a total loss or a loss in excess of eighty 
 per cent, then this clause does not operate. It is effec- 
 tive only in case of a partial loss. 
 
 Many policy holders believe if they are within the 
 eighty per cent clause — that is, carry eight thousand and 
 have a nine thousand loss, they will receive the full loss 
 in case of fire ; but this is an error, as they receive only 
 the sum on which they pay premiums. 
 
 Do you know that a fire insurance company has 
 sixty days in which to settle — may replace damaged 
 property with like material — may take all or part of the 
 damaged property and pay all or part of the damage 
 claimed in proportion? It is true. 
 
 Do you know under what conditions your policy is 
 void and the company released from all claims I Here 
 
42 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 are a few of them : In case of a written or stated mis- 
 representation of facts — if the interest of the insured is 
 not truly stated — if work in a manufacturing plant like 
 your shop is done at night — if a factory cease to be oper- 
 ated for more than ten lays — if mechanics be employed 
 on the premises for more than fifteen days — if the hazard 
 is increased with the knowledge of the insured — where 
 a store or a building is unoccupied for more than ten 
 days — if any oils or explosives other than kerosene (of 
 the United States standard) be kept in the place — by the 
 falling of a building, except as the result of fire. 
 
 When one looks over that list the only thing to 
 wonder at is that any man ever gets any insurance, with 
 so many holes for the company to creep out through, 
 yet it is an almost unheard-of thing for a company to 
 fail to pay. You did not know all these things, of course, 
 for you had never read yom* policy. 
 
 Any policy may be cancelled, by either the company 
 or the policy holder, at five days ' notice. When the policy 
 is cancelled by the company a pro rata proportion of the 
 premium is retained for the time the policy was in force. 
 When it is cancelled by the policy holder a short rate 
 premium is retained by the company for the time the 
 policy was in force. 
 
 When a loss from fire is paid on a policy, the face 
 of the policy is reduced to the extent of the loss for the 
 balance of that year unless additional premiums are 
 paid. This means that if you carry a ten thousand dol- 
 lar policy and have a five thousand dollar loss which is 
 paid, you then have only five thousand dollars insurance, 
 in case of another fire with total loss before the year is 
 
INSURANCE 4S 
 
 out, but this risk may be avoided by the payment of new 
 premiums. 
 
 A fire insurance policy does not cover loss from 
 lightning unless it is so stated on the face of the policy. 
 
 Get that insurance policy of yours out of the safe 
 deposit box and read it over with care, and if there are 
 things in it that you do not like, or that you would like 
 to have changed, see the agent and have it done. Almost 
 any of the foregoing conditions may be waived and 
 stricken out of the policy by special agreement obtained 
 from the company to cover the especial case. There is 
 ordinarily no cost to this. 
 
 If your building is unoccupied; if you care to have 
 the boys in the shop work after ten at night ; if you want 
 your policy to cover your signs and awnings; if for any 
 reason your hazard is increased; if you want to keep 
 some gasoline in the store — get your agent to indorse 
 your policy to cover the case and you are well protected ; 
 but be sure that it is written on the face of the policy, for 
 no company assumes responsibility for the statements of 
 its agents other than those written in the policy — if they 
 did, the agents would never be able to sell insurance! 
 Don't take the agent's word for it — he may be forgetful 
 and again he may just be a liar ! 
 
 Above all things, get your insurance from a man who 
 is reputable — who has a permanent place of abode and 
 does not carry his office in his coat tail pocket ; who will 
 be fair to both you and the company. 
 
 Fire insurance is the greatest comfort in the world 
 when you get it. If you don't get it the fault is yours, 
 as no company wants to swindle you. Read your policy 
 
44 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 just the same as you would read any other contract 
 involving ten thousand dollars. 
 
 There is no need for any man to waste time writing 
 ahout life insurance. There are plenty of men in this 
 world who would not kill a pussy cat and allow her six 
 kittens to starve, who don't carry a cent of life insurance 
 for their own wives and children. There is no fool-killer 
 and so their cases will have to go over till Nemesis over- 
 takes them. From that point of view there is nothing to 
 be said on the sul)jeet of life insurance, but if a man 
 owes money for his stock, if he has bought a "Why pay 
 rent" and still has a mortgage on it, or if he is obligated 
 in any way to any one for any money which would be a 
 hardship on his wife to pay in case of his death, then he 
 is not treating either his wife or his creditor right if he 
 is not carrying insurance enough to pay the bill the 
 moment he is dead. There is a forru of policy called 
 "Term Insurance," which is designed to cover just such 
 cases, and the policies are sold at a very low rate. If 
 some jobber had enough confidence in you to trust you 
 with a stock of goods when you opened a store, it would 
 be a gracious act for you to take out such a policy and 
 pay the premiums, sending him the policy to hold till 
 your debt to him is cleared or the policy can be made 
 simply payable to your estate and he will get his money 
 anyway. 
 
 Sickness and health policies do not appeal particu- 
 larly to the man who is working for himself, but they 
 are good things for a man on a salary who has a family 
 to support, as they guarantee a regularity of income in 
 case of illness and most of them embody in themselves 
 an accident policy also. 
 
INSURANCE 45 
 
 I am a firm advocate of accident insurance. I have 
 never known of a man getting hurt who carried an acci- 
 dent policy. All around him people are having safes 
 fall on their heads, people are being beaten over the 
 head by policemen, and folks are getting run down by a 
 fool in a stink wagon, but not so with the man who car- 
 ries accident insurance ! He bears a chai'med life ! You 
 cannot kill him with a brick! Even the optical business 
 won't kill him, for I have spent twenty-five dollars a 
 year for hundreds and hundreds of years and have never 
 even stubbed my toe since I took out a policy. I go to 
 optical conventions, too, and take all sorts of chances ! 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SIGNS AND VvINDOW DISPLAY. 
 
 I lay it down as an indisputable proposition that 
 there is not a sane man in the United States who does 
 not know what three signs mean. First is the striped 
 pole which indicates to the man whose spinach needs 
 gathering that here can be found a barber. If that bar- 
 ber hung out a sign stating that he was a tonsorial artist 
 and neglected those red, white and blue stripes he would 
 lose money every day of his life. 
 
 If you see a wooden Indian standing in front of a 
 store you know that here you can obtain those little roils 
 of tobacco which sell for a dime, or those rolls of cabbage 
 which sell for a nickle; that here you can obtain those 
 Turkish coffin nails which are sending our youths to an 
 early grave, and that here you can obtain ammunition 
 for that asthmatic old jimmy pipe of yours. No other 
 sign on earth could tell you these same things ! 
 
 The third is the pair of spectacles which hang in 
 front of the optical shop, or is engraved on the brass 
 signs. The man or woman does not live who does not 
 know, the moment this conventionalized spectacle front 
 is sighted, that here the weak-eyed public may seek solace 
 with some hope of finding it. 
 
 The optometrist or optician who fails to plaster this 
 thing on the front of his store is sadly lacking in busi- 
 ness acumen! Remember that your customers look for 
 
SIGNS AND WINDOW DISPLAY 4T 
 
 it! Eemember that your only reason for putting out a 
 sign is to let the public know what your business is, and 
 that this will do it to a better advantage than anything 
 else on earth. Remember that you are not selling your 
 name — you are selling spectacles; and while it is all 
 right, of course, to put your name on your signs and on 
 your window, keep constantly in mind that the name 
 should be secondary and the pair of spectacles primary. 
 You i^ut out a sign to help you sell your goods and there 
 is no other sign which will so well accomplish that object. 
 
 This is all I have to say on the sign subject so far 
 as the steady signs outside of the window go, but just 
 inside of my windows, on each side, are two porcelain 
 signs of white on black which I am absolutely batty 
 about! They have brought me more business than any 
 one thing I have ever used, and they are both alike. 
 They read, "Quick Repairing," and there is not one 
 business day in ten that people do not come into the store 
 and mention them to me, and show by their conversation 
 that it was the sign which brought them in. 
 
 Now when it comes to the matter of window dress- 
 ing, there is no question but what the average optome- 
 trist knows less about it than any merchant on earth. He 
 washes his window, puts in a piece of velvet on which is 
 scattered a few odds and ends of his stock, and lets it 
 go at that. He puts everything in his window except 
 brains, and the task of dressing the window is generally 
 left to some boy who doesn't know the difference between 
 the principles of advertising and the jack of spades. 
 
 The average optical window falls down because it 
 is too grasping. It seems to be trying to show one 
 sample of every article carried in stock and the resultant 
 
48 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 window is one which is simply a jumbled mass of junk 
 which attracts the attention of no one. The matter of 
 window dressing comes under the general head of adver- 
 tising and the same rules that apply to one apply to the 
 other. The public is in a hurry and it hurries through 
 its paper and past your window every day. In a single 
 newspaper advertisement you would never tliink of 
 attempting to describe and price everything in your 
 store — you take up a single article or a single subject 
 and attempt in that one ad to enlighten the public on 
 that one subject. 
 
 Api^ly the same theory to your window dressing. 
 The world is hurrying past your window bent on its 
 own business and your window must contain something 
 to attract it. There is little doubt but that the simplest 
 way to accomplish this is to put only one sort of an 
 article in the window and put this in in great quantities. 
 If you opened your paper in the morning and saw a 
 whole page on which was printed nothing but the two 
 words "Toric Lenses" line after line, column after 
 column, till the entire page was filled, it would be bound 
 to attract your eye, would it not I This is exactly true 
 of your window. If you put in it nothing but one article 
 — let us say, eye-glass chains — the effect would be the 
 same on the eye. A single eye-glass chain is lost among 
 a lot of other optical goods and would attract no par- 
 ticular attention, nor would half a dozen, but if you put 
 them in row after row, chain after chain, imtil the whole 
 window was filled with them, the effect on the passer-by 
 would be exactly the same as if he had seen the words 
 "Eye Glass Chains" printed over and over in his morn- 
 ing paper, and you will certainly impress on that man's 
 
SIGNS AND WINDOW DISPLAY 49 
 
 mind the fact that you have them and should he be in 
 need of one you will then and there make a sale. 
 
 Oddly enough, just the reverse is good windo-w 
 dressing. As there is such an insane desire on the part 
 of the advertising public to get as much as possible into 
 a certain amount of newspaper space, or as much as 
 possible into a show window, the reading and gazing 
 public have become accustomed to seeing these spaces 
 crowded and if you picked up your morning paper and 
 saw exactly in the center of the page one small word 
 surrounded by a sea of white paper you would certainly 
 see what that word was, and so also if you saw a large 
 window nicely dressed in some pleasing color and in the 
 middle of that window one small article you would at 
 once conclude that the article must be something unusual 
 to be given such prominence, and would walk over to see 
 what it was. 
 
 These things are simply putting brains into the 
 window. If all the men in your neighborhood are decor- 
 ating their windows in one general way, change yours 
 and do something different. The men who pass your 
 window are busy. If you hope to attract their attention 
 you must use some originality. 
 
 Moving objects of any sort are good window dis- 
 plays. These little radiometers are good things for the 
 window for that reason. One of the best optical win- 
 dows ever used in the east was where the owner filled 
 his window full of small, cheap compasses with his ad on 
 one side. From the chandelier he swimg a big horse- 
 shoe magnet which swung over the compasses like a 
 pendulum and of course as it passed the compasses went 
 into hysterics and pointed everywhere except north. 
 
50 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 The window attracted large crowds all the time it was 
 used. 
 
 The seasons have a large bearing on window decora- 
 tions also. In the first place, the cloth used in the decor- 
 ation should be cool, soft tones in summer, and dark reds 
 and warm tones in winter, for a person is unconsciously 
 attracted to a cool spot in summer just as they turn to 
 a warm one in winter. 
 
 Field glasses, magnifiers, pedometers and such 
 things make good windows in the spring, when people 
 are planning vacations and are tramping around through 
 the woods, just as smoked glasses make a good exhibit 
 on the hot, sunny days of summer. In the winter, when 
 the theatrical season is on and when Christmas is com- 
 ing, of course such things as opera glasses and gold 
 lorgnettes should have a prominent place in your dis- 
 plays. 
 
 The greatest difficulty in decorating a show win- 
 dow is, without doubt, to obtain that difficult to define 
 thing, individuality. If a show window is absolutely 
 perfect it is also absolutely useless. One follows another 
 as naturally as a pickaninny follows a brass band. It is 
 so perfect that a man would pass it a hundred times and 
 never look into it. It is just like half a hundred other 
 show windows in the same neighborhood. It attracts no 
 more attention than the lamp post on the corner. The 
 lamp post is just like all the other lamp posts in the city, 
 but if you were to run across a lamp post painted red, 
 while all the others in the city were black, you would see 
 that red lamp post every time you passed it. You would 
 wonder why it was red and you would doubtless think it 
 
SIGNS AND WINDOW DISPLAY 51 
 
 was the best looking lamp post in town. That is indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 There is no better place on earth for an optician to 
 display his individuality than in his window — not only 
 display it, but cash it! 
 
 The optometrist's show window is a small one and 
 he can do almost anything he pleases with it, and what 
 he seems to have pleased, in most cases, is to make it as 
 much like every other show window as one carbon cojjy 
 is like another. 
 
 To be individual one does not have to be freaky. If 
 the stores near you have round windows, have yours 
 built square; if the other fellows have brass signs, 
 make yours of some other metal. Remember that red 
 lamp post. 
 
 Just a few days ago a woman on a car said, "I don't 
 remember the name of the place, but there is a stuffed 
 eagle in the window." Get some one thing in your 
 window which will become a landmark so that people 
 will remember your store by it. 
 
 When it comes to the question of price tags in the 
 window, there is little to be said, for it all depends on 
 the store, its location, its general style, and all that sort 
 of thing. 
 
 I never advertise prices on my spectacles in any 
 way. Not in the papers, or in my window, yet I have 
 not the least hesitation in putting prices on any article 
 of practical merchandise I put in the window. I can sell 
 two dozen pedometers any week I will fill my window 
 with them and place a little sign I have with a man taking 
 long steps and the wording, ' ' How far do you walk each 
 day ? ' ' and then, ' ' Pedometers $1.00. ' ' When I have opera 
 
52 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 glasses or field glasses in the window I do not use price 
 tags, as the prices on these articles are too high to prove 
 alluring, yet when one sticks by me for a couple of sea- 
 sons I have no hesitation in cutting the price on it and 
 putting it in the window as a special. 
 
 It would seem that a good rule about price tags 
 would be to put them on those articles which people are 
 liable to think higher priced than they really are and 
 leave them off of those articles which are higher priced 
 than they seem. The truth is, that all a show window 
 can do is to bring the people into the store. The sale 
 must be made inside, and the window which brings in 
 the people is the window you want. 
 
 Just one other thought about the window. Neither 
 you nor any other man who is in business would fail to 
 keep himself, his clothes and his linen in first-class 
 shape and scrupulously clean, for you know that the first 
 impression one gets is the lasting one. If you see a man 
 shabbily clad, his collar and cuffs in mourning, you are 
 going to judge that man's character, his standing in the 
 community, and even his morals, by his dress. These 
 things are the signs which he hangs out that the public 
 may know what the man is, and they judge him accord- 
 ingly. What a man's clothes are to him, his window is 
 to his store. As his clothes are the first thing to catch 
 the eye of a person and as he is generally judged by them, 
 so also his window is the first thing to catch the eye of a 
 possible purchaser, and it is by it that his whole estab- 
 lishment is judged. 
 
 If that window be fly-specked, if it be poorly and 
 inartistically decorated, then the possible customer is 
 going to decide that the man who occupies that store is 
 
SIGNS AND WINDOW DISPLAY 53 
 
 a man uucleauly in his lia])its, behind the times in his 
 profession and hardly worth while dealing with. 
 
 Should that window be clean, should the exhibit be 
 artistic, should the goods in it be up-to-date articles of 
 optical merchandise, then the man who stops and gazes 
 in that window will decide that the rest of the establish- 
 ment is on a par with the window and will not hesitate 
 to enter and will expect to get good up-to-date service, 
 and I must say that in this, as in most other things, 
 the public is right. 
 
 A window should be decorated at least twice a week, 
 and as you change your advertisements in the papers 
 with frequency, so should you change your advertise- 
 ments in the windows with frequency, for very nearly 
 the same people pass your store everj' day and you can- 
 not expect them to remain interested or pause before 
 your window very often if you do not make some change 
 in it. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ADVEETISING. 
 
 In the last fifteen years the writer hereof has 
 received — he will not say earned — several thousand dol- 
 lars writing about optical advertising. 
 
 In the same length of time he has wasted at least 
 twice as many thousands in unprofitable advertising he 
 has done himself. In the last two years he has adopted 
 a system of advertising wliich has paid him handsomely 
 for every dollar he has put into it, and no man living can 
 induce him to change it. 
 
 In those fifteen years he has tried out almost every 
 plan, every medium and every form of advertising, and 
 most of them he has abandoned because he has found that 
 he could not trace directly to them the results which they 
 should have brought. 
 
 Advertising is like the tariff question — a purely 
 local issue. AVhat will pay the optometrist in one town 
 or city is money thrown away in the next. There is no 
 hard and fast rule of advertising. There are a few gen- 
 eral rules, however, which prevail in every town and city 
 in the country. 
 
 First, let me say that in my opinion this "General 
 Publicity," of which the advertising solicitors prate so 
 much, is all bosh! It is not worth ten cents a million 
 circulation. Pay no money for advertising which does 
 
ADVERTISING SS 
 
 not show up on your examination books! There is the 
 nub of the whole matter! 
 
 Start tomorrow to check up on your advertising. 
 Find out from the men and women whose eyes you 
 examine how they came to patronize you. Use all the 
 means in your power to get the information, but if you 
 can get it in no other way, simply say to them that you 
 are spending a lot of your good money in advertising and 
 you want to know what portion of it is paying you, and 
 as you notice that they are new customers of the place 
 you want to know how they came to patronize you. Now 
 when you have found this out, make a note of it on the 
 examination book and then when the end of the month 
 comes tabulate these figures and you will find some very 
 unexpected results ! 
 
 This is the only method on earth to determine what 
 advertising is paying and what is not. If the advertis- 
 ing does not bring you results, quit it. I have discov- 
 ered in my life that there is not a return of one per cent 
 of the money invested in the following form of advertis- 
 ing: Bill boards, programs of all kinds, signs tacked on 
 fences, advertising in and around hotel offices, on regis- 
 ters, blotters, clocks and such things. I have never had 
 an advertising novelty of any description which has paid 
 me at all. 
 
 My bookkeeping on my advertising has convinced me 
 that there are only two forms of advertising which will 
 pay the optometrist. One is straight newspaper adver- 
 tising, and the other is circular letters or booklets, and 
 my own experience has brought me sixty per cent more 
 returns from newspaper advertising than it has from 
 circulars. 
 
56 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 When we take up the question of newspaper adver- 
 tising it is attempting to explain in a single chapter a 
 profession that it takes a lifetime to learn. I have tried 
 it in every way and all I shall attempt to point out to you 
 is that certain forms of newspaper advertising have paid 
 me big returns on the money invested, while others have 
 failed completely. 
 
 The advertising that I am now doing and which is 
 paying, is straight educational advertising, without an 
 illustration or a price in it. It is in reference to toric 
 lenses as opposed to flat, Kryptok as opposed to cements, 
 finger-piece mountings as against the old styles with 
 their loose screws, box studs instead of the ordinaiy 
 kind, examinations without drops as against the inferior 
 ones given by the oculist. 
 
 It is an advertisement of service and not an adver- 
 tisement of price. It is a question of trying to create 
 a desire in the minds of the readers for something bet- 
 ter, more scientific, something for their own good and not 
 a question of price. It is an attempt to create in the 
 minds of the public that my name stands for quality and 
 that anything purchased here is sure to be right because 
 it came from here. 
 
 This form of copy is a winner. It is bringing me 
 daily results which more than pay for the cost of the 
 advertising. Every month when I check up my cost of 
 advertising against my returns I find that I am on the 
 velvet side. 
 
 I have cut out illustrations in my advertising because 
 I have never seen illustrations for optical advertising 
 which were not either "cute" or uninteresting. I do not 
 think that pictures which can be classed as "cute" have 
 
ADVERTISING 57 
 
 any place in the subject matter of so serious a thing to 
 talk about as sick eyes, and the uninteresting illustra- 
 tions only distract attention. 
 
 So much for newspaper work, except that I would 
 advise any man who contemplates spending a hundred 
 dollars in newspaper advertising to spend the first five 
 with Page, for his book on optical advertising, as it will 
 save him far more than that, and as it contains more 
 good ideas about composition and type than any I have 
 ever seen. 
 
 The booklet proposition brings results — results de- 
 pending on the booklet. Cheap booklets, cheap printing 
 and cheap postage is the cause of more failures in this 
 line than anything else. 
 
 I believe that a good series of follow-up letters will 
 help any man's newspaper advertising, although I do 
 not believe that it will take the place of it. I do not 
 believe that the average form letter sent out is profit- 
 able. Remember that it must be a good letter, short, to 
 the point, and written with infinite care. 
 
 In the first place, I do not believe they are worth ten 
 cents a thousand when sent out under a one-cent stamp. 
 If you will observe, when looking over the mail which 
 comes to your own desk in the morning, you will see that 
 you dump the stuff which comes to you under one-cent 
 postage into the waste basket, unopened, and why you 
 should expect people to read your circulars which come 
 in the same way is a mystery compared with which the 
 immortal question of who killed Cock Robin is as plain 
 as day! 
 
 Second, I do not believe that letters with more than 
 one sheet in them are worth paying postage on. They 
 
58 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 are so bulky that no one save a farm hand with a Sunday 
 on his hands would wade through them to find out what 
 it is all about. 
 
 If you want to get the people, send out a good 
 process or typewritten letter signed with a pen, and 
 under two-cent postage, and you will stand a chance to 
 get your money back. 
 
 I had a friend who started in to market a book 
 which appealed to one class of men only. His first 
 attempt was to send out 50,000 unsealed circulars under 
 a one-cent stamp. From these he sold 271 books for a 
 dollar which cost him thirty-three cents each. Printing, 
 folding and postage left him with a net loss of $-118.43 
 on the deal. 
 
 His next attempt was with 25,000 of the same circu- 
 lars under a two-cent stamp. These made him 1,715 
 sales and a profit of $549.05. 
 
 You will notice that the simple affixing of a two- 
 cent stamp instead of a one made the same circular bring 
 thirteen times as many replies. This taught him a les- 
 son and his next venture was a strong letter of just ten 
 lines. He hired twenty men, giving them two cents and 
 a half a letter, to write these in long hand, and the man 
 who wrote the letter also addressed the envelope. 
 
 He sent out 25,000 of these also under a two-cent 
 stamp, and they sold him 6,405 books and gave him a 
 clear profit of $2,591.35! 
 
 The first object in a circular letter is to have it read 
 and any expense to which you may go in assuring this 
 point is money well invested. 
 
ADVERTISING 59 
 
 A one-cent stamp is a through ticket to the waste 
 basket, with no stop-over privileges on the busy man's 
 desk. 
 
 No man who wants to succeed in the optical busi- 
 ness can practice economy in his postage account. Fif- 
 teen minutes ago a lady went out of your store who told 
 you that Mrs. Smith had sent her to you for glasses. 
 Right there you should have used every bit of ingenuity 
 you possessed to find out which Mrs. Smith that was 
 and where she lived. Before you close the place tonight 
 you should sit down and write that Mrs. Smith a letter 
 telling her that the lady had been in at her suggestion 
 and that you appreciated this evidence of her kindly 
 feeling. 
 
 It makes no difference who this Mrs. Smith is, she 
 would appreciate that note. If she is one of your local 
 four hundred fashionables she will consider that she is 
 a sort of patroness of your place and will send in her 
 other friends. If she lives in the allej^, back of Herkimer 
 street, it is likely that she don't get a letter once a year 
 and yours will be an event for her and she will hustle 
 for you. It is the only method I know which will start 
 people working for you without a salary. 
 
 Take this matter to yourself as an example. You 
 have referred your friends to this butcher, baker or 
 candlestick maker, yet you have never received such a 
 note. Would it not please you to get one? 
 
 It is an advertising dodge which will pay the optom- 
 etrist plethoric dividends on the postage invested, and I 
 have found by advertising records on my examination 
 books that exactly seventy per cent o^" my new business 
 
60 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 comes through the recommendations of my former 
 patrons. 
 
 Next in hne comes the all powerful "two-year let- 
 ter." Every day the optometrist should sit down and 
 write a personal letter to the persons whose eyes he 
 examined two years before, calHng attention to the fact 
 that they should come in again. This pays better for the 
 money invested than any form of advertising he can do, 
 and he will get a larger percentage of replies to it than 
 any other form of advertising. At the close of this 
 chapter is a general form I use, but, of course, I vary it 
 in the case of people I know personally. 
 
 Next in importance in the advertising game is per- 
 sistency. The results of advertising are accumulative. 
 Advertising done a year ago may bring its results today 
 and the only successful advertiser is the man who hangs 
 on to it like a bull pup worrying a root. All too many 
 optometrists try this, that or the other form of adver- 
 tising for a few weeks or months and then abandon it 
 before the results begin to show. 
 
 When you were a boy did they have one of those old 
 fashioned wooden pumps at your house? You will 
 remember that you had to pour about a quart of priming 
 water into it to get it started. Well, advertising is like 
 that. The money you pay for the advertising is the prim- 
 ing water, and if in the days when you worked the old 
 pump you had poured in your priming water and worked 
 a few minutes and then quit, you would have even lost 
 your priming water; but if you had kept plugging away 
 you not only got your priming water back, but a lot of 
 the cool water from the depths of the well with it. You've 
 
ADVERTISING 61 
 
 got to keep hammering away at advertising if you hope 
 to get your money back. 
 
 Finally, keep your records of results. Put down on 
 each examination where the patient comes from and at 
 the end of each month tabulate the results so you will 
 know where you get your business. Put down your 
 clubs, your lodge, your church and all the various forms 
 of printed advertising you do, and classify every patient 
 so you can eliminate the guess work and know where you 
 are getting your business, for there is no use hoeing in 
 stony ground when there is a fertile field next door just 
 waiting to burst into a golden harvest of dollars if you 
 will woi'k it. 
 
 Below is the two-year form letter, which may be of 
 interest : 
 
 "Just two years ago today (firm name) examined 
 your eyes and made glasses for you. Time dies, 
 doesn't it? 
 
 "Once in two years isn't often, but it is rarely that 
 a pair of glasses have to be changed oftener. It is also 
 rarely that a pair can be worn longer than that without 
 eyestrain. 
 
 "A change in yours may be needed now, and you 
 had better come in and let him examine your eyes. 
 
 "You of course know that he makes no charge for 
 this examination, and it would be wise to take advantage 
 of it. 
 
 ' ' Often when the glasses do not need changing they 
 get twisted out of alignment and need readjusting. This, 
 also, is on his free list, and it is a pleasure for him to 
 do it, and it will add to your eye comfort. 
 
62 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 "Should your lenses need changing, you will find 
 his prices low and the service, you know, is good. You've 
 had it. 
 
 "May he hope to see you in a few days? 
 
 "Remember, its (address)." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SALESMANSHIP. 
 
 The proprietor of a big piano house had sent one of 
 his salesmen out into the countiy to see a prospective 
 customer. He was at lunch when the salesman returned 
 and walked up to his table. The first thing he asked 
 was, "Did you get the money?" The salesman began 
 with, "Well, when I got out there there was a family 
 of three people and " Here the proprietor inter- 
 rupted him with, "Did you get the money?" "No," 
 
 said the salesman, "but I " Again the proprietor 
 
 interrupted him with, "Never mind why. I was only 
 interested in knowing whether you got the money. ' ' 
 
 That's all there is to the salesman proposition — just 
 getting the money. Optical conventions may rail at the 
 medical profession; they may delve deep into the scien- 
 tific end of the business; they may discuss ethics and 
 usages till they are blue in the face, but the man who 
 gets the money is the man who is the best optometrist ! 
 
 There are those who would insist that the word 
 "honesty" be used in the above paragraph, but it is not 
 needed for no man can win in any business game unless 
 he is absolutely honest. The theory of "let the buyer 
 beware " is as dead as the language in which the lawyers 
 
64 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 couch the term. The man who attempts to vary one hair 
 from absolute and scrupulous honesty in all his business 
 transactions is as sure to lose as a man who persists in 
 drawing to inside straights! 
 
 The question of how to increase the sales efficiency 
 in one's employes and in one's own refracting work, 
 however, is one of the biggest problems in the optical 
 profession. There are plenty of men who are good 
 refractionists but few who are good salesmen, and it is 
 infinitely easier to teach refraction to a salesman than 
 it is to teach salesmanship to a refractionist. 
 
 At the outset let it be said that there is no incentive 
 for great exertion in any walk of business or sport with- 
 out some sort of a contest. The home physical culture 
 stunt has proven almost an absolute failure for this rea- 
 son. There is no doubt but what a half hour's physical 
 exercise in the morning in one's own home is as good as 
 an hour spent on a golf course, but the trouble lies in the 
 fact that no man will go through a stated set of motions 
 all alone with no particular object in view; yet that same 
 man will run a race, box a round, jump a few hoops, or 
 play golf for an hour if he only has some man to race, 
 box, jump or play against him. 
 
 The inclination to strive for supremacy in anything 
 is inherent in every man. 
 
 The great object, then, for the proprietor of any 
 optical store is to rouse his employes to some sort of a 
 contest in salesmanship. 
 
 What has been said of these games and sports is 
 still more true of them when a cup, medal or cash prize 
 
SALESMANSHIP 65 
 
 is hung up. Men will contest for a time just for the love 
 of it, but if interest is to be maintained there must be 
 a prize to strive for. Here, then, we face the proposition 
 that if we expect high class salesmanship we must incite 
 a contest, and to retain the interest in that contest we 
 must hang up a prize. 
 
 The solution of the matter, without a doubt, is not 
 to judge men by the amount of their cash sales in the 
 store. The reason this is unjust is because one man may 
 happen on two prism binocular sales in one day and wait 
 on only two people, while the clerk beside him might 
 wait on fifty people and yet not sell as much in gross 
 cash as the lucky man who picked up the two binocular 
 sales. This will not answer because luck must be elim- 
 inated. 
 
 The true test of a man's ability as a salesman must 
 rest at the test case. The prices he gets for the stuff he 
 sells is the true test of his ability as a salesman. 
 
 Do not understand that any optical establishment 
 should not have its prices fixed as inexorably as the laws 
 of the Medes and Persians, for it should. One price to 
 all has been so clearly demonstrated to be the only 
 proper system that it needs no comment here. 
 
 When a man increases the prices he gets for his 
 work in a house where the charges are fixed, it simply 
 means that he must sell a better quality of stuff. Where 
 he once sold cement bifocals he must sell Kryptoks. 
 Where he once sold flat he must sell toric lenses, and 
 where he once sold aluminum or gold filled frames, he 
 must sell gold. 
 
fifi THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 After much search I believe the best system is this 
 one which I learned from one of the most successful 
 retail opticians in the United States. 
 
 His method is to take the average sale per man who 
 seats himself in the examination chair. Every person 
 who sits down is counted against the man making the 
 examination and every dollar he gets from that man is 
 credited to him. If he examines the eyes of a hundred 
 men in a month and he gets gross sales of one thousand 
 dollars his average for that month is ten dollars per 
 man — and allow me to break in long enough to say that 
 if there is a man in the United States with that sort of 
 an average, I have a position for him with a salary of 
 $5,000 per year attached. 
 
 Now in such a contest there is only one item which 
 must be remembered, and that is, should the refraction- 
 ist find the services of an oculist needed and send the 
 patient to that oculist and the patient come back later 
 with a prescription for glasses, the price of that pair of 
 prescription glasses should be entered on the examina- 
 tion book and go to the credit of the man on his average. 
 
 Let these results be tabulated on a chart like that 
 used by a nurse in a fever case. Let a chart be made 
 for each month in the year, and let each man who figures 
 on that chart as an examiner have his line ruled on it in 
 a different color of ink. 
 
 I know of one instance where a man's average was 
 raised from $2.45 to $5.25 in less than a year through 
 this method. I know where a refractionist who, working 
 alone, raised his own average by $3.00 per person by 
 simply working against his record. He hung on the wall 
 
SALESMANSHIP 67 
 
 immediately back of his examination table his own chart 
 of averages, where he would face it every time he made 
 an examination, and constantly worked against it just 
 as sprinters race against the record time made by some 
 other fellow in bygone days. 
 
 The question of the prize to work for is one which 
 must be left to the discretion of the head of every estab- 
 lishment to decide for himself. There is no question but 
 what the proprietor of every optical store in the country 
 is working for the money there is in it, and he should 
 bear constantly in mind that the people whom he em- 
 ploys are working for him for the same reason, and that 
 the best prize he can offer for high efficiency is good cold 
 cash. 
 
 Just how this cash should be distributed is difficult 
 to say. But it should come in some way so that a man 
 gets pay according to his increase. It is not enough that 
 a man should have made a better record than any other 
 man in the store, he should have also bettered his own 
 record. 
 
 If this spirit of contest can be raised in a friendly 
 way it will add, at a minimum, twenty-five per cent to 
 your receipts. You would pay quite a lot of money to 
 any man who would contract to increase your business 
 that amount, yet few men are willing to take the trouble 
 to work out such a plan as this in their own sales force. 
 
 The great advantage of this plan is that it makes a 
 change in your business affairs which is to your great 
 advantage outside of the present profit. No man ever 
 made a reputation selling cheap goods. No man ever 
 bettered his standing by putting out low priced goods. 
 
68 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 It is a fact that a man may put up quite a yell over the 
 price of a pair of torics in a heavy gold frame at the 
 time he bought them, but when they are his he will go 
 out in the world and boast of what a fine pair of spec- 
 tacles he has; whereas, if he had taken advantage of a 
 bargain sale some place and bought a cheap pair, he 
 would never have boasted of them. 
 
 Of course sales efficiency can be increased in every 
 part of a store. The most important part is, without 
 doubt, at the test case, but the store proper must not be 
 neglected. 
 
 Without question the very first impression created 
 on the mind of an entering purchaser is the most last- 
 ing. During the first minute you are in a store you 
 form your opinion of that place. If the opinion you 
 form is a good one, you are an easy customer — you are 
 ready, willing and anxious to be pleased. If you form 
 a poor impression of the store or its clerks, you are 
 stricken with a grouch before you are in the place a 
 minute, and you are hard to please, hard to sell, and 
 give up your money reluctantly. 
 
 To please a man entering a store, the clerks behind 
 tlip counter must be on the job instantly. They should 
 jump to wait on the customer, no matter what they are 
 doing, and come with a smile. It has not been a month 
 since a man came into my store and one of my sales 
 people went forward briskly with a smile and a "Good 
 morning." The man reached out his hand sadly and 
 said: "Young man, I would like to shake hands with 
 you. I have been in this city for almost two weeks, and 
 you are the first person whom I have met that seemed at 
 all glad to see me!" They both laughed and the sale 
 
SALESMANSHIP 69 
 
 was already made. All that was needed was to hand out 
 the goods for the customer was in a buying humor. 
 
 The average man behind the counter seems to be 
 of the opinion that nothing on this earth is contagious 
 except measles and mumps. The truth is that there is 
 nothing on earth so contagious as manner. The smiling, 
 brisk salesman never has any save smiling and brisk 
 customers. The people you face over the show case are 
 just like the man you face in the mirror. If you smile, 
 they smile back at you, and if you give them sour looks 
 and frowns they will return them in kind. 
 
 A few weeks ago I noticed that one of my salesmen 
 was selling seventy-five per cent of the thermometers 
 and barometers sold in the store, and I am as curious 
 and as snoopy as a fox terrier. I decided to watch him 
 and see how he did it. It did not take me three days 
 to get it. 
 
 There is no subject under heaven that people talk 
 as much about as the weather, and he was simply taking 
 advantage of it. If a man said it looked like rain or 
 looked like clearing up, little "Bright Eyes" was on the 
 job in a minute. He would tell the man that he noticed 
 this morning that the barometer was falling and the wind 
 rising, and that this indicated hail or some such thing 
 as that, for he was really weather-wise and inside of two 
 minutes he would have that man looking at a bunch of 
 aneroids and letting him explain how they worked. If 
 it was a question of temperature, he would produce a 
 bunch of thermometers, and if it was humidity he would 
 send the man home with a hygrometer in his hand before 
 he knew it. 
 
70 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 This is forcing business. It is a fact that one-half 
 our wants are artificial ones. It is also a fact that the 
 general run of optical salesmen are too prone to stand 
 back on their professional dignity and not try to be 
 merchants. The sale of such things as telescopes, field 
 glasses, magnifiers, chains, hooks, automatics and meter- 
 ological instruments could be increased fifty per cent all 
 over the United States if the optical salesmen in the 
 various stores would simply use some of the ability which 
 lies undeveloped in them. 
 
 Another instance will serve as an illustration. An 
 optometrist who had always had an office practice bought 
 out another on the ground floor. Among other things he 
 inherited a lot of good tin case thermometers. He looked 
 at them on his wall for two years, and then put them in 
 the window and marked them ten cents each. One of 
 his competitors came in and guyed him for selling them 
 so cheap and finally bought the lot at the price. They 
 were intended to sell for $1.25, and the new owner put 
 them in his window as shop worn standard thermometers 
 marked down from $1.25 to 65 cents and sold the entire 
 lot at that price in a week. He could show the customer 
 the test nicks on the tube, he could tell them the differ- 
 ence between a standard and an ordinary thermometer, 
 and besides he was a salesman where the other man was 
 not. 
 
 Turn your attention to the sales methods of the 
 department store. Put your goods under people's noses; 
 take advantage of the conversation to show people goods ; 
 turn the conversation in such a manner that it will give 
 you the chance to show stuff, and then don't hesitate to 
 show it. 
 
SALESMANSHIP 71 
 
 Above all, get busy with the system of keeping track 
 of the average per man in your examination room, and 
 you will have given your business the greatest boost in 
 years ! 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 PERSONALITY. 
 
 A story is told of a farm liand who watched a sum- 
 mer boarder come out on the back porch one morning 
 before breakfast. The city man polished his shoes, he 
 shaved himself, he washed his face and hands carefully, 
 he manicured his nails, he brushed his clothes, and then 
 put on fresh collar and cuffs. The countryman watched 
 the entire process with infinite interest and then re- 
 marked, "Good gosh, mister! You are an awful lot of 
 trouble to yourself ! ' ' 
 
 The successful optometrist must be a lot of troulale 
 to himself. He must remember a fact which does not 
 seem like a fact because it can not be explained, but a 
 fact, nevertheless, that two-thirds of the customers in an 
 optical store are women; that the other one-third are 
 men of culture and refinement, for the higher educated 
 a family is the more glasses are worn. To be brief, his 
 patrons are the best people in his town. To deal with 
 these people he must dress and act the part. He must 
 &eep himself and his clothes perfectly clean. 
 
 Please do not understand that I mean he should be 
 extravagant in his dress — I mean that he must simply be 
 clean. 
 
 Come over here to the mirror a moment and I will 
 show you exactly what I mean. Let's start in at the top. 
 I want you to carefully look over this optometrist you 
 
PERSONALITY 73 
 
 are facing and tell me honestly if he looks as though he 
 were the most skillful and most scientific man in the 
 city. 
 
 Look at his face. How long has it been since he 
 shaved? Look at his collar. Is it frayed at the edges? 
 Is it perfectly clean? Is it the sort of collar the best 
 optometrist in town would wear? Look at the tie. When 
 he smiles look at his teeth and see if they are clean. 
 When he raises his hands look at the edges of Ms cuffs. 
 Are they white, or has he got a band of mourning around 
 them? 
 
 Look at his hands and his nails. Are they clean? 
 Eemember he is going to shove those hands into the face 
 of a lady in a moment. Are they the sort of hands you 
 would like hovering aroimd your own face? 
 
 How about the dandruff on that coat collar? How 
 long has it been since that coat was pressed? How about 
 the trousers? Are they creased down the front, or are 
 they so baggy at the knees that they look like he were 
 squatted just ready to jump? 
 
 Trifles, you say? Of course they are trifles! But 
 they are the sort of trifles which attract well-bred people 
 to you, if they are looked after, and they are the sort of 
 trifles which drive people to another store if they are 
 neglected ! They are the sort of trifles which might just 
 tip the scale of business from failure to success and the 
 sort of trifles which cost a man nothing and may pay 
 immense profits on the time it takes to do them. I 
 once worked in an optical store, many years ago, in 
 which swung this sign, and it's a good one: "If you 
 have nothing else to do, go wash your hands." 
 
74 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 How about your speech? Do you say "I have saw" 
 or "I seen?" Do you say "Ain't" and "Take it from 
 me" when you are conversing with your customers? Do 
 you know that to well-bred and well-educated people 
 these things are as much discords as a bad note is to a 
 trained musician and that they hurt and jar the sensi- 
 bilities of such people just as much? 
 
 Do you know that the optometrist who poses as an 
 educated man is giving himself the lie by the use of such 
 examples of bad grammar and slang? Do you think 
 people will believe you are any better educated in your 
 own profession than you are in the language of the 
 tongue you speak? Not likely! Use as clean English 
 and keep as clean a person as you possibly can if you 
 hope to do business with the better class of people who 
 do the same thing. 
 
 I missed my breakfast one morning, and in conse- 
 quence I went early to lunch, and as I arrived at eleven 
 I saw something new to me. I saw every waiter in a big 
 hotel lined up in a long row across the dining-room 
 while the head waiter walked along and inspected each 
 man. He looked at his face, his tie and collar, and his 
 shoes ; he walked the length of the line, and then on the 
 return trip he made every man extend his hands and 
 turn them before his eyes to show that they were clean 
 and that his nails were manicured. 
 
 If the big hotels are as careful of their servants as 
 all this, they must know that a failure along this line will 
 offend, and if it would offend in a servant how much 
 more would it be likely to offend in a professional man 
 who is supposed to be educated, refined and above things 
 of this sort? 
 
PERSONALITY 75 
 
 Right along this line comes the matter of "Are 
 there any ladies present?" stories. There is no worse 
 habit on earth for an optometrist to get into than that 
 of telling barroom stories in his own store. Of course I 
 know that neither you or any other man will tell such 
 stories when there are ladies in the store, but do you 
 suppose for a single instant that there is a woman in the 
 world so stupid who, when she comes into your store, 
 and sees two or more men in a group stop talking the 
 moment she enters, does not know that the topic of con- 
 versation was not fit for her ears? 
 
 Do you think there is a man on earth so common 
 that he will not have more respect for you if you do not 
 tell such stuff I No matter how much he may enjoy tell- 
 ing them, he will not think less of you if you do not ! Of 
 course, when men tell you such stories in the store you 
 must listen — you need not draw yourself up and say 
 "How dare you, sir?" or anything like that. Simply 
 laugh or smile, as the occasion may require, but cut out 
 all the "That reminds me" stuff. It doesn't pay, and 
 whenever you allow your store to become a clearing 
 house for that sort of conversation you make it a loafing 
 place and the better class of people will not come into it. 
 
 It's bad business to allow men who are not busy to 
 congregate in your store, anyway. Simply do not en- 
 courage them. If they come, excuse yourself on the 
 ground of work and leave them. People, particularly 
 women, do not like to have others around listening to 
 their conversation, and, more than that, if you are chat- 
 ting with friends and have to leave them to wait on a 
 customer, you are liable to give the customer scant atten- 
 
76 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 tion in your desire to get back and resume your conver- 
 sation. 
 
 Keep your person, your linen, your conversation and 
 your store as clean as a pin, not only because it is the 
 proper thing to do from a standpoint of your personal 
 pride, but because it pays. 
 
 Then there is the booze habit! Cut it out, and cut 
 it out quick! The man who has the mingled odor of 
 cloves and rye on his breath during business hours is a 
 fool, net! Remember, I am not touching this question 
 from a moral standpoint. That has been done — done to 
 a frazzle ! I am speaking as a business man and from a 
 business standpoint. 
 
 Go out at night and soak your soul to saturation witJi 
 the essence of don't give-a-damativeness if you must — 
 it's your own funeral — but if you value your business 
 existence don't touch it during business hours! 
 
 The question of whether it was just one cocktail 
 before breakfast, or just one stein with your lunch, has 
 no bearing on the case at all. The real point is that you 
 have the odor of drink on your breath and there are a 
 large proportion of people with whom you do business 
 that are prejiidiced against it and it will cost you money. 
 These people cannot distinguish between a drink and a 
 drunk, and are liable to believe you the latter. 
 
 Drinking during business hours is a habit, and it is 
 a habit which leads on down a road peopled with men 
 whose trousers are fringed at the bottom; whose noses 
 are magenta colored; whose eyes are weak and watery; 
 whose nerve is gone and whose hands are palsied, rheu- 
 matic and joint-swollen, and such men are without honor 
 
PERSONALITY 77 
 
 in the banks and leading jobbing houses of the optical 
 profession. 
 
 Habit is the strongest factor in human life. Every 
 new habit is a new master. Let that habit be a habit of 
 frugality and next year you will be more frugal ; let that 
 habit be a cocktail and next year you will take two; or 
 if you start kissing your wife in the morning before you 
 start to work, next year you will kiss her twice ! 
 
 Without a positive effort to cultivate good habits 
 any man will drop naturally into bad ones. It is natural 
 to do wrong. Good habits must be cultivated and nur- 
 tured like orchids, while bad habits, like tough and nox- 
 ious weeds in a garden, will grow without cultivation or 
 rather through lack of it. 
 
 Allow the habit of drinking during business hours 
 to grow on you, and it is only a question of time until it 
 will cost you many influential friends and many patrons. 
 You may be a moral man as men go, you may not drink 
 enough to injure your health, but if you drink at all dur- 
 ing business hours you will injure your business. 
 
 It is an odd fact that the most intemperate people 
 in the world are the so-called "temperance people." It 
 is their honest belief that any man who will take a drink 
 will rob a hen roost and then come back after the pole 
 on which the hen sat. Such being their prejudi-ce they 
 will patronize the poorest optometrist in the city rather 
 than spend a dollar on a man who takes a highball. Cut 
 it out or it will cost you money. 
 
 Once more let me call attention to the fact that this 
 is written as a business document and not a moral thesis. 
 
 It's queer, though, how little attention the average 
 man pays to good advice. He will take five men with 
 
78 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 him to help him select a five-dollar bull pup from a litter, 
 but will refuse advice in the selection of a wife or in the 
 regulation of his personal habits. 
 
 But take it from me that a man cannot conduct a 
 business while he is full of fusel oil, or make a living as 
 long as he scents his breath with cardamon seeds. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 RECORDS. 
 
 There are more ways to keep prescriptions and 
 examination records than there are to abuse lettuce in a 
 salad course at dinner. 
 
 The little details are a matter for each optometrist 
 to decide for himself, but there are two great principles 
 involved which should be watched with care. 
 
 Earlier in this book I have called attention to the 
 "two-year letter" which pays so well. In order to be 
 able to send these there must be some sort of a daily 
 record of examinations which can be foimd by the date. 
 
 This of course entails the old-fashioned index, 
 which takes time and often a search through half a 
 dozen books before one can locate an examination, while 
 the ordinary card index system will not enable an optom- 
 etrist to lay his hands on the work he did two years ago 
 today. 
 
 To my mind both of these things are necessary in 
 every well-conducted optical establishment, so I solve 
 the riddle by using both systems. 
 
 When a patient comes to my place for an examina- 
 tion, I take his name and address, which I write in an 
 ordinary blank book, or what is known as the "Record" 
 style. On this record I make all the notes of the case 
 I care about, as well as the result of the refracting and 
 also the origin of the case — I mean by that, where the 
 
80 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 case came from. I have a set of symbols and opposite 
 every name on my examination book you will find 
 "Ad. S.," "F. P.," "C. A.," meaning, "Advertisement 
 in the Star," "Former patient," or "Club acquaint- 
 ance," as the case may be. All these are tabulated 
 monthly and kept in a small memorandum book for my 
 own information. 
 
 Of course each sheet in this book is dated so when 
 I come to my shop in the morning I can turn readily to 
 the work of that same day two years before and get 
 out my two-year letters on the first mail. 
 
 With each of these record books is an index and if 
 every card in my card index were lost or destroyed I 
 would have a complete if not a convenient record of all 
 my examinations, which are put in a fire-proof safe 
 every night. 
 
 On several occasions I have had cards lost or mis- 
 placed in an index and this old-fashioned method of rec- 
 ord has never failed me since I have been in business. 
 
 From these books every morning I make out card 
 records for my card index which, as I have before 
 explained, is placed beside my case for repair work 
 immediately inside the door, where it is easy of access 
 when a person comes iu with a pair of broken glasses to 
 be repaired. Nothing so displeases a customer as to be 
 compelled to wait while a prescription is being looked up. 
 
 I have these cards printed on two colors of paper, 
 one white and the other blue, and on the white cards I 
 record the examinations we make in the store and on 
 the blue ones we record the prescriptions we get from 
 the oculists, the only difference being that in the upper 
 left hand corner of the blank which is left for the name 
 
RECORDS 81 
 
 of the doctor who wrote the prescription, we write the 
 number of the book and the number of the page in our 
 own record books. 
 
 I have seen a hundred forms of card index for 
 opticians, each of which had some good points and some 
 bad ones. I have read them all, from a card with nothing 
 but a space for the name of the patient and all the rest 
 blank, to those which had a space for a memo every 
 time the glasses were repaired, and as a result have 
 decided that each man should originate his own form and 
 originate it for the same reason that I originated the one 
 I use — because it has blanks for the information which I 
 want to keep. There may be things on it you would not 
 care about just as there may be things you would like to 
 keep that I have not put down. 
 
 Both sides of the card I use are printed on stiff bond 
 paper — not on bristol board, as I once had them, as that 
 fills up a drawer too quickly and if you use it you will find 
 in a very few years your cabinet drawers will be filled 
 with records. 
 
 In addition to my regular index I have a dead box 
 for cards which are over six years old as I find it very 
 unusual to have occasion to refer to a card further back 
 than that. On the first of January every year I go 
 through the index and remove to this dead box all cards 
 which are over six years old, and this keeps my index 
 from getting filled up with useless cards. 
 
 I keep another file which is very important to me 
 also, and that is a file of my daily cash sales. I had a 
 small book made with thirty-one lines to a page and 
 down a column to the extreme left I have printed the 
 numerals to 31 representing the days of the month. 
 
82 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 The rest of the page I have ruled into five vertical 
 columns headed "Gold," "Steel," "Jobs" and "Miscel- 
 laneous," leaving another column for totals. 
 
 Each day's business I divide into these various 
 heads and set the results down in the book, adding them 
 up at the end of each week and setting down the month's 
 total at the bottom and the average per day beside it. 
 
 Have you ever figured how much difference there 
 is in your profit between your repairs and your new 
 sales? Have you ever considered how much difference 
 there is between your profits on new work in gold and 
 in steel frames? Have you ever noted how much dif- 
 ference in profit there is between the sale of general 
 optical merchandise and spectacles? Do you know how 
 much of your gross sales come from one source and 
 how much comes from the other! Do you know that 
 your repair work is better than it was last year or do 
 you just think so? Do you know whether that increase 
 in business in May was from new glasses sold or 
 whether you sold some filled glasses and things which 
 boosted the sales for the month? Listen to me, my 
 friend, if you don't know and are simply guessing, it 
 behooves you to get busy and find out ! 
 
 No man in this or any other business can afford to 
 leave things to chance ! A hundred little leaks are more 
 liable to sink a ship than one big one for the one big 
 one creates excitement and a hurry up call is issued 
 for all hands to come and save it while the one hundred 
 little ones let in just as much water, create much less 
 excitement and are harder to stop because they ai-e scat- 
 tered. 
 
RECORDS 83 
 
 Year by year I have made my records more and 
 more exhaustive and year by year I have found and 
 corrected little leaks which were sapping my profits and 
 have stopped them. Just one example. I noticed that 
 we were selling a lot of steel and aluminum glasses. It 
 seemed to me that something might be done to correct 
 this and put gold glasses on these people. A council of 
 war was held and after experimenting we found the 
 best plan to be that whereby we showed only two frames 
 at the start, gold and steel. We centered all our ability 
 on selling the gold frame, pressing the point of looks 
 and durability to the limit, and when we found the 
 patient could not pay for gold we played the trump card 
 and showed the gold filled and generally sold that 
 instead of the steel. 
 
 We found that where the three frames were shown 
 at the same time we sold fewer gold frames, as the filled 
 ones cut into the gold sales, but where we showed only 
 the two and kept back the gold filled as a joker we could 
 almost eliminate the sale of steel frames entirely. As 
 I write I reach over on my desk and pick up the little 
 book, of which I have just spoken, and find the steel 
 sales so few that the column marked "Steel" is well 
 nigh empty and will remain so as long as I keep the 
 careful records that I now keep. 
 
 No matter what the matter is which relates to your 
 business, put it down in black and white and tabulate 
 and analyze it ! It can never harm you and will at times 
 make you some startling revelations. 
 
 I keep an account with every oculist in my home 
 city. I put down under his name not only a record of 
 the prescriptions I get from him every month, but also 
 
84 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 the amount of money I got for filling those prescrip- 
 tions, and I have found in more than one case that the 
 financial standing of the patients of one man makes 
 them better customers than those of some other doctor 
 who sends me more people. They buy better stuff. 
 
 There is not a month that we do not prevent mis- 
 understandings in our repair department because we 
 have a book in the shop which shows the name, kind of 
 glass, sort of job and date of delivery of every pair of 
 glasses we repair. 
 
 Should a man come in as did one within a week 
 claiming that he paid us to put a new temple on his spec- 
 tacles and that we soldered it instead, all we need do is 
 to produce our job book which showed that it was the 
 right temple we put on while it was the left which had 
 been soldered, which recalled to his mind that he had 
 once broken it out of the city and had it soldered. 
 
 The more records you keep the less trouble you 
 have and the more you know about your business. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 HOW TO FIGURE PROFITS. 
 
 This is a queer old world, anyway. There are so 
 many things which we think we Imow that we do not, 
 and so many things which we know that we don't remem- 
 ber we know till some fellow comes along and jogs our 
 memory about them. It hasn't been very long since a 
 young optometrist talked to me in confidence and this 
 is the line of conversation. 
 
 " I am certainly glad that I stuck to it till I finished 
 business high school. It has been a big help to me since 
 I have been in the business, for, while I find plenty of 
 optometrists who are well posted in refraction, I find few 
 of them who are posted in business systems. Some of 
 them that I have met have a lot of trouble figuring dis- 
 counts and profits and it is perfectly easy to me." 
 
 I replied, "I once had a fellow in my employ who 
 didn't know how to mark an article which cost $1.00 so 
 as to make 100 per cent profit." 
 
 "Well, upon my word!" exclaimed the youngster. 
 
 "How would you do it!" I asked him casualty. 
 
 "Why, $2.00, of course!" he replied. 
 
 "But, I insisted, if you sell an article for $2.00, which 
 cost you $1.00 you are only making 50 per cent because 
 50 per cent of the amount you receive is profit." 
 
 He scratched his head, looked puzzled for a moment 
 and flushing up he confessed that he could not do the 
 
86 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 problem to liis satisfaction despite that boasted high 
 school education. 
 
 No man can do it ! The only way you can mark an 
 article to make 100 per cent profit is to have some fellow 
 make you a present of it! Even then you will have to 
 sell it in a store which costs you no rent and have it sold 
 by clerks who draw no salary. 
 
 This young man was making the same mistake that 
 thousands of optometrists all over the country are mak- 
 ing. A mistake which only the large gross profit in the 
 business enables them to make and still eat three times 
 a day and pay rent. You figure your profit on your buy- 
 ing ijrice instead of on your selling price. 
 
 It is my honest belief that there is not one optome- 
 trist in ten who can mark an opera glass so that it will 
 pay him a certain percentage of profit ! 
 
 Nine of them out of ten will tell you that if you buy 
 a magnifier for $1.00 and sell it for $1.25 you have made 
 25 per cent. This is the failure to take into considera- 
 tion the cost of doing business which in every case must 
 be added when marking the cost of goods. The second 
 mistake is in figuring the profit to be made on the cost 
 price when it must be figured on the selling pi'ice. Please 
 try to keep these two points in mind. 
 
 In the optical business as in all others, two separate 
 amounts of capital are required. One part of the capital 
 is that which is invested in merchandise, the other is that 
 required for running expenses, selling expenses and, in 
 fact, all expenses outside of those not properly charge- 
 able to the merchandise account. 
 
 Both these items of investment must pay a proper 
 return if the optometrist is going to eat with any degree 
 
HOW TO FIGURE PROFITS 87 
 
 of regularity. It is obvious that dividends on all the 
 capital invested are not possible unless all is considered 
 in marking the selling price. 
 
 If the percentage of profit is reckoned on the cost 
 of merchandise only, as is the case of the man who buys 
 the magnifier for $1.00 and sells it for $1.25 under the 
 impression that he is making 25 per cent profit, no pro- 
 vision is made for that part of the capital which is 
 invested in running expenses. 
 
 Here is a case in point. A local optician who had a 
 photographic department had to have a delivery wagon 
 to haul heavy plates and such things around to the 
 photographers. He decided to sell one of his horses and 
 use a one-horse wagon. The horse had cost him around 
 $100. He thought he could get $150 for him and he said 
 50 per cent profit was good enough. He had no time to 
 attend to the selling of his horse so he turned the job 
 over to a horse dealer to look after. The horseman 
 agreed to make the sale for 33 1-3 per cent commission. 
 He sold the horse for $150, deducted his $50 commission 
 and handed the optometrist his $100! So he came out 
 only even! See the point? Here was a clean profit of 
 50 per cent eaten up exactly by a commission of 33 1-3 
 per cent! How did it happen? The optometrist figured 
 his profit on the cost price of the horse but the horseman 
 figured his on the selling price ! 
 
 This optometrist did just what three-fourths of the 
 optometrists in this country are doing today. He did not 
 know how to mark his goods. 
 
 You may think this estimate an exaggeration but I 
 can prove it to you by actual figures. The Burroughs 
 Adding Machine Co. printed an advertisement on the 
 
88 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 back cover of the Saturday Evening Post which contained 
 this problem: "A certain article costs $1.00 wholesale. 
 What will it have to be sold for to allow a profit of 10 
 per cent after deducting 22 per cent for the cost of doing 
 business?" They otfered a valuable book to anyone who 
 sent in an answer to the problem regardless of whether 
 the answer was right or wrong. Now this is a prob- 
 lem which every optometrist has to answer every time 
 he marks up an invoice of goods. Eemember also that 
 this paper has a general circulation and goes to every 
 class of merchant who does business in the United States. 
 
 How many people do you suppose answered that 
 problem correctly? 
 
 Seven hundred and fifty out of every one thousand 
 answers were wrong! Three-quarters of the merchants 
 in this country do not know how to mark their goods 
 to get a certain percentage of profit. Do you believe 
 that optometrists are superior in their business knowl- 
 edge to the average run of merchants? I do not. On 
 the contrary, I believe that they are less well informed 
 on the principles of business systemizing than any class 
 of men with whom I have ever come in contact. 
 
 The answers to this problem propounded by the Bur- 
 roughs people ranged all the way from $1.10 to $1.60. 
 The majority gave the selling price as $1.32 or $1.34, 
 allowing a profit of one cent or less notwithstanding that 
 an explanation in the ad. said plainly that the answer 
 was not $1.32. 
 
 If the wholesale price is $1.00 and the cost of doing 
 business is 22 per cent, $1.34 does not allow 10 per cent 
 but only 1 4-10 per cent profit. On a gross annual busi- 
 ness of $15,000, which is about what the ordinary small 
 
HOW TO FIGURE PROFITS 89 
 
 optometrist does, he would clear $150 a yeai-, or a little 
 more than $12 per month, and yet there are optometrists 
 all over the land marking goods that way and the fool 
 killer still procrastinates! 
 
 The optometrist would not even make this small 
 profit unless he had himself on his own pay roll at a 
 regular salary and my experience has been that not one 
 in fifty has himself on the pay roll. If they are not on 
 the pay roll of course their own salary would not be in 
 the 22 per cent cost of doing business and they would 
 not make on $15,000 gross sales as much as they could 
 make selling War Cry's on Saturday and beating the 
 tambourine the rest of the week ! 
 
 If article referred to were sold for $1.32 the mer- 
 chant would lose almost one per cent instead of making 
 ten per cent ! There is little doubt in my mind that there 
 is not an optical establishment in this country today 
 using this cost marking system which is not selling some 
 goods for less than cost with the fatuous idea that they 
 are getting rich at it. Do you dare put your own stock 
 to this test? 
 
 The whole trouble is in adding 32 per cent of the 
 cost price to the cost price instead of adding 32 per cent 
 of the selling price to the cost price. 
 
 Now, before any optician can properly mark his 
 goods he must know exactly what it costs him to do busi- 
 ness. My experience has been that in small establish- 
 ments it hovers around the 20 per cent mark and increases 
 as the size of the establishment grows larger. I have 
 known cases where it run almost up to 30 per cent but 
 these are rare and needless. 
 
90 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 The 22 per cent used by the Burroughs people is 
 good enough to continue to use as an illustration here. 
 
 The method of determining the cost of doing busi- 
 ness is to add together from last year's business every 
 item of your expense. Put in every cent spent except 
 what was actually spent for merchandise, not forgetting 
 cases and advertising. Take this sum and find out what 
 per cent it is of the total sales of that year and you will 
 find out exactly what your cost of doing business is. This 
 must be done anew every year as changes in rent, clerk 
 hire, delivery expenses and alterations in advertising 
 campaigns will make variations year by year. 
 
 An amazing amount of money is lost every year 
 through forgetfulness. You must keep tab on all your 
 expenses or your profit figuring will be as full of holes 
 as a colander. Only a chump will trust everything to 
 mere memory. 
 
 Having once determined what the expense of doing 
 business is, the proper method of figuring the cost of 
 the goods is this— we will take the Burroughs problem 
 as an example. 
 
 Per cent Per cent 
 
 Let the selling price equal 100 
 
 Deduct for cost of doing business 22 
 
 Deduct for profit 10 32 
 
 Cost is 68^ of selling price 68 
 
 Then 68 per cent is $1.00 
 
 1 per cent is 0147 
 
 100 per cent is 100 times .0147 or selling price. . .$1.47 
 
HOW TO FIGURE PROFITS 91 
 
 This is the solution of that problem and the pi'inci- 
 ple involved is the solution of every problem of marking 
 goods in an optical store; yet all the way from Maine 
 to Texas there are optometrists who are buying magni- 
 fiers at $1.00 and selling them for $1.25 with the wild 
 idea that they are making 25 per cent profit when the 
 chances are that they are losing money or just about 
 breaking even on the deal ! 
 
 You may have a fine education, you may be able to 
 take a problem in geometry or algebra and make it go 
 dead, jump through hoops and sit up and beg but if you 
 want to fatten your batting average with the bank you 
 would better be putting in a little time on the simple 
 arithmetic of business! 
 
 There are some things they do not teach in the col- 
 lege classes in higher mathematics, that I want to impress 
 on every optometrist, and here are a couple of them. 
 Any per cent of a smaller sum is a smaller per cent 
 of a greater sum. Percentage of profit must be added 
 to the selling price and not to the cost price if you hope 
 to buy new socks for the baby ! 
 
 One more weak spot in the average optical estab- 
 lishment, which is close kin to the cost system, should be 
 mentioned and then this chapter will be done. 
 
 You are a pretty pimk optometrist if you could not 
 go out and earn thirty dollars a week working for some 
 other fellow, are you not? That is $1,560 a year. How 
 much did you make last year over all your expenses? 
 Less than that? 
 
 It's a mighty small optical store which has in it less 
 than $2,000 worth of stock and fixtures, isn't it? It is. 
 If you took that sum aroimd to your bank cashier he 
 
92 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 could tell you some bonds to buy which would pay you 
 5 per cent net, couldn't he? He could. Thank you again 
 for agreeing with me. Now the interest on $2,000 at 5 
 per cent is just about $100 a year, isn't it? This means 
 that if you are in business for yourself and you are not 
 clearing over $1,660 per annum you are in bad and had 
 better get out and go to work for some other fellow. The 
 truth is that the mistake generally comes from the fact 
 that the optometrist forgets to add into his cost of doing 
 business a salary for himself equal to what some other 
 man would pay him for his services as manager. 
 
 If he hasn't his own name on the pay roll and does 
 not pay into his personal account a sum equal to 5 per 
 cent on the money he has invested in stock and fixtures 
 then he is joshing himself along trying to fool himself 
 into thinking he is making money when he is not. 
 
 Get on your own pay roll and draw your salary 
 every week. Get in your stock and fixtures at the interest 
 rate for the sum invested and then see liow much money 
 you are making. Be honest with yourself. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 SAVING. 
 
 As has been said in another chapter of this book, 
 there is a tendency in our business for the proprietor to 
 allow his profits to get tied up in stock. A man will open 
 an optical business and worry and struggle along for 
 ten years, denying himself and family many things, and 
 year by year see his business increase and then at the 
 end of the ten years he can show you on his books, maybe, 
 that he has made say $25,000 ; yet if you will look at his 
 bank book you will find that he has $346.78 in cash! He 
 will have spent $15,000 in living and have $7,000 tied up 
 in stock and the other three thousand will represent what 
 he invested in the Little Wild Cat Dredging and Smelt- 
 ing Co. and the nice green shares with their gilt seals 
 are somewhere in his safe now — he doesn't remember 
 where ! 
 
 Such is life! Full of gum boils, zylonite spectacles 
 and solid gold spring eye glasses sold for a dollar! It 
 is discouraging for a man to look at that $7,000 worth 
 of stock, to remember the times he wanted to go fishing 
 and didn't, and recall that all he has to show for it is a 
 bunch of fly-specked telescopes and tarnished opera 
 glasses ! 
 
 What's the answer"? A sinking fund — a savings ac- 
 count ! 
 
94 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 It's not a question of how mucli you are making — 
 it's a question of how much you have! It's not a matter 
 of paper profits — show me your bank book ! I don't care 
 about your good will, your valuable file of prescriptions, 
 your future prospects — let me have a peep into your safe 
 deposit box! I can tell you whether you are making 
 money or not and I am no auditor nor expert account- 
 ant! If you are making it, show it to me! I want to 
 feel it in my hands ! If you cannot do that you cannot 
 even buy a beer with it ! 
 
 The trouble lies in the fact that too few optometrists 
 develop the sinking fund habit. This business, trade or 
 profession, as you choose to call it, like all others, has 
 its lean as well as its fat years, and the remedy for the 
 lean ones is the Sinking Fund. 
 
 There are different phases of the sinking fund for 
 different men but fundamentally it is a certain sum set 
 aside out of each week's business and placed in a savings 
 bank or building association as an emergency fund. 
 
 For the optometrist, it has always seemed to me 
 that it should represent at least as much as 10 per cent 
 of his last year's profit. Take the gross profit of last 
 year and divide this sum into fifty-two parts and then 
 increase it till it is some even sum of money and put this 
 on your pay roll just the same as if this fund were an 
 employee. No matter how great the strain, no matter 
 how hard up you are, put this money aside even if you 
 have to borrow money from the bank to do it. 
 
 Then when the great strain comes, as it does come 
 to every business man in the world some time, you will 
 have the cash to meet it. 
 
You are in a position then to be your own broker 
 and loan yourself money, if you want to do so, which is 
 better business than being comioelled to pay interest to 
 the banker. 
 
 If you will pardon me for lapsing into the personal 
 again I will tell you what I have done in the matter. To 
 begin with, I set aside a certain sum of money each week 
 till I had over three hundred dollars. When I reached 
 this sum I went to my banker and asked him to buy a 
 five hundred dollar bond of a local public service cor- 
 poration and hold the bond as collateral for the two hun- 
 dred dollar loan. I paid him five per cent on the two 
 hundred dollar loan and the five hundred dollar bond 
 paid me five per cent so I was three per cent ahead on 
 the interest proposition. 
 
 During the time of this loan I continued my sinking 
 fund till I got money enough in it to pay off the loan 
 and then I kept at it till I had accumulated two hundred 
 more, and then repeated the process till I had another 
 five hundred dollar bond. 
 
 After I owned two of these five hundred dollar bonds 
 I hypothecated them with the banker and had him buy 
 me another and paid on this one till I cleared it up and 
 all the interest on these bonds I, of courae, paid back 
 into the sinking fund as the profit was on the money in it. 
 
 I have repeated this process for many years till now 
 I have several of the bonds lying in my safe deposit box 
 and when I need some money to discount a big opera 
 glass bill or, as recently happened, to finance a change 
 of location, I can simply slip one of these bonds ove^ 
 the counter at the bank and get my loan without being 
 under the least obUgation to anyone in the world and 
 
96 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 the interest on tlie bond is taking care of the interest 
 on the loan at all times and, in the vernacular of the 
 street, "I should worry!" 
 
 There are three things which I consider that any 
 optometrist should do if he has made a success. First 
 carry enough life insurance to take care of those depend- 
 ent on him including creditors ; second, own his own home 
 and, third, have enough laid aside to take care of the 
 proverbial rainy day. If I were to outline a plan for 
 the new man just starting out I would advise the insur- 
 ance first. None of these fancy investment policies which 
 promise you all sorts of dividends and that sort of thing, 
 for life insurance is not an investment — agents to the 
 contrary notwithstanding. The old-fashioned "die to 
 win" insurance is the only kind worth considering and 
 let the policy be large enough to keep your wife and chil- 
 dren from present want and to cover the debts you owe 
 and no more. As I have said life insurance is insurance 
 against death; not an investment. 
 
 Having taken care of this, buy a "Why Pay Rent?" 
 There was never a time in the history of the world when 
 a man can so easily own his own home as he can now. 
 
 Hundreds of men have deluded themselves out of a 
 nice home by trying to figure out how much money the 
 builder is going to make out of them when he sells them 
 a house on the installment plan. If you are one of those 
 who has been frightened by the high interest charges 
 on this proposition get a pad and a pen and make a few 
 pen tracks at my suggestion — tracks toward a home of 
 your own. 
 
 Let us suppose that you would buy a house worth 
 about $5,000. If you did you would be allowed to pay 
 
for it in montlily notes not exceeding $40 each. Of tliat 
 $40 just one-half or $20 would be interest, insurance, 
 taxes and such things. Terrible, isn't it? Fifty per cent 
 of your good money thrown away! Let's see if it is! 
 
 If you live in just about such a house now you are 
 paying thirty-two dollars and fifty cents a month rent. 
 This money is an absolute loss. The money you are pay- 
 ing in rent each year is an absolute and dead loss and it 
 amounts to $390. At $40 per month, which would be 
 your payment on the house, yor. would pay out $480, or 
 exactly $90 more than you would pay in rent. Now these 
 $40 per month notes cover $20 worth of interest and 
 charges, and $20 goes on the house, so you are paying 
 $240 per year on the house. The difference between the 
 sums for rent and purchase being $90, you are buying 
 $240 worth of real estate every year for $90. 
 
 Now in opposition to this, suppose you go on paying 
 rent and put this $90 per year in some savings institu- 
 tion at the rate of $7.50 per month and receive 3 per cent 
 per annum on your minimum deposit as is usual. The 
 sum total of interest paid on such an account will not 
 equal the natural rise in value of any piece of real estate 
 bought with fairly good judgment. 
 
 The other factor in the matter is that if a man gives 
 his note he will meet that note when it is due, while if 
 he has no outstanding obligations he will be inclined to 
 fritter away his earnings instead of saving them. 
 
 Yet another factor is that the man who buys a home 
 is a married man, and the woman never lived who did 
 not want a home of her own and who would not co-op- 
 erate with her husband and save to the limit to have one. 
 
98 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 Just bear in mind these three points in life and you 
 can and will be an independent and successful man. 
 
 First insure your family and creditors against your 
 death. 
 
 Second, buy your own home. 
 
 Third, start the Sinking Fund habit. 
 
 These are the three milestones on the road to suc- 
 cess — the three stations at which the train bound for 
 prosperity must stop. 
 
 To the man who is contented to trust all to chance 
 they are of little interest, but to the man who is going 
 somewhere, who has a definite aim and goal in view, they 
 are the three points at which he must aim before success 
 will have crowned his efforts. 
 
 The mere getting of money is not a laudable ambi- 
 tion but the ambition to gain these three points is cer- 
 tainly a most laudable one. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 PARTNERSHIPS. 
 
 If I were going to write this chapter just to suit 
 myself it would contain the one word, "Don't"! But 
 there are people who would want more reasons for it 
 than my simple word and here are just a few of the thou- 
 sands that I could mention. 
 
 My reason for saying don't take a partner, if you 
 can help it, is because partnerships are like matrimony, 
 a thing to be entered into only when you can no longer 
 resist the temptation. It is one of the easiest things on 
 earth to get into and one of the very hardest to get out 
 of. It's like the man who caught the bear and then 
 shrieked for someone to come and help him turn it loose. 
 
 Borrow money, hire more help, even bring your wife 
 and children down to the store, but don't, for heaven's 
 sake, yoke yourself and your destiny up with some other 
 man! 
 
 If you want to expand, if you want to go into busi- 
 ness for yourself, if you want to buy a bigger stock and 
 you cannot do it without taking in a partner, then you 
 are not yet ready to expand, to go into business for your- 
 self, or to buy heavier. 
 
 When you have earned the money to go into busi- 
 ness, you will know better how to handle that business; 
 when you have made the money out of your business it, 
 is time enough to enlarge it, and when you have saved 
 
100 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 the money to buy a larger stock tlien you are ready to 
 buy it and will buy it with more judgment! 
 
 There is not one partnership in ten where, down in 
 his heart, each member of the concern does not feel that 
 he is dragging the other fellow as well as the business 
 on his shoulders as a load. Each feels that on him the 
 success of the business depends and more new ventures 
 in the optical line fail because of policy disagreements 
 between partners than from any other one cause. 
 
 In a partnership there are two families to feed, two 
 heads to be consulted and two of everything in the mat- 
 ter of expense, while a single head is best to pursue a 
 certain outlined policy on to the goal of success. 
 
 If a partner is inevitable, try and give him credit 
 for all the good he does for the firm. The man who sells 
 the tickets out in front of the side show may not be able 
 to swallow a sword but the sword swallower would do a 
 l^oor business without him. 
 
 But the happiest, most independent optometrist is 
 the one who has no one to blame for his failures, no one 
 to share his successes and no one with whom he is com- 
 pelled to divide his profits. The firm as such may not 
 make so much money but the happy proprietor may put 
 it all down in his savings account and treasure it all to 
 himself. 
 
 Partnerships and law suits have ever traveled hand 
 in hand and the optical business, which gets tangled up 
 in a court of law, had just as well be knocked in the head 
 with a mallet. 
 
 If two o)' more men vntsf unite in an optical ven- 
 ture, then the only sensible plan is to turn the whole mat- 
 ter into a stock company. 
 
PARTNERSHIPS 101 
 
 The incorporation fever has become almost an epi- 
 demic in this country, but it is not a disease that the 
 business doctors are very often called in to treat for it 
 is more often a success than a failure. Fundamentally 
 I know of no objection to incorporating. In many cases 
 it is almost a necessity and in a large majority of cases 
 it is advantageous. 
 
 Where a partnership exists incorporation is always 
 desirable because in a court of law any man who owns 
 an interest in a business on a partnership basis is liable 
 for all the debts of the business in case his partners can- 
 not pay. He is not only liable to the extent of his inter- 
 est but is liable to the extent of his means. 
 
 In case of an incorporation, the owner of stock is 
 liable for nothing provided the certificate of stock states 
 clearly that the stock is non-assessable. 
 
 Again, if a partner in an optical store gets a grouch 
 at the way things are going he can tie the whole business 
 up, while the difference is being adjudicated, and can tie 
 it up in a mesh of legal red tape until it is ruined before 
 it can be disentagied. But should the business be in the 
 form of a stock company he can vote the amount of his 
 stock in any deliberation of the company, but in case the 
 majority of the stockholders decide on a line of action 
 contrary to his opinion he must submit with docility or 
 profanity,, as he sees fit, but submit he must. 
 
 In a business owned by one man the reasons for 
 forming a stock company are fewer but equally as good, 
 because almost invariably it is done to secure more money 
 to enlarge the business. Many a prosperous optical 
 business can be improved with more capital for the pur- 
 chase of additional stock, or to do additional advertising, 
 
102 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 and the formation of a stock company is undoubtedly 
 the best way to obtain it. Many men prefer to incor- 
 porate and sell shares in their business rather than go 
 to the bank and borrow the money. If he borrows and 
 is able to pay back then he is better off, for he gets all 
 the profit of the increased business, whereas if he sells 
 stock he must divide the profit with his stockholders. 
 
 Another advantage of the stock company idea is that 
 it makes a good firm's credit better. On the contrary, it 
 makes a weak firm's credit poorer. Once each year every 
 incor23oration must give to the courts a statement of its 
 liabilities and assets and this statement must be made 
 under oath. 
 
 If the creditors or anyone who is interested in the 
 affairs of the concern is curious as to its workings they 
 may go and see this statement, which is a matter of court 
 record, and its falsification is a criminal offence. 
 
 I know of one case where articles of incorporation 
 would have saved three men from absolute ruin. Three 
 optometrists of my acquaintance took a flyer in a stone 
 quarry. They put up $3,000 each and hired a foreman 
 and put a gang of men to work. The foreman was care- 
 less and one morning a blast went off prematurely and 
 added nine Italian faces to the population of Heaven. 
 The widows wailed and then sued for damages, which 
 the court allowed to the tune of $4,000 per man. The 
 total was $3G,000 and when the assets of the three part- 
 ners was gathered in a bunch it amounted to $28,000, of 
 which one man had $1,000, another $3,500 and the other 
 man the balance! Had that quarry been a stock company 
 the only liability on either man, on non-assessable stock. 
 
PARTNERSHIPS 103 
 
 would have been the proceeds of the sale of the quarry 
 and the tools used in working it. 
 
 There is another advantage of the stock company 
 plan also, and that is the existence of a board of directors 
 who meet from time to time and after conference decide 
 on the policy of the firm, and several heads are, of course, 
 less liable to run off at a tangent than one. 
 
 Again, in case of a man's death an estate has a much 
 more tangible asset in shares of stock than it has in a 
 partnership or part ownership, as the only method of 
 disposing of a partnership, in case of a disagreement, is 
 to throw the entire concern into court or accept the heir 
 of the former partner as a new partner which, in the 
 case of a widow or an inexperienced person, is poor pol- 
 icy for an optical establishment. 
 
 Where a father desires to raise his sons up in his 
 business as his successors there is no plan which is bet- 
 ter than the stock company idea. He may then give his 
 sons shares in the business, in addition to the salary he 
 pays them for their services, and the amount of that sal- 
 ary is decided by the stockholders themselves, which gives 
 each son a voice in the salary paid to his brothers. 
 
 If the father desires, he can retain 51 per cent of the 
 stock and thus retain actual control of the business, up 
 to the time of his death, and yet not make his sons feel 
 that they are mere hirelings waiting for him to die before 
 they can come into actual ownership of the business. 
 
 In some optical stores I recall faithful employes 
 have been rewarded in the same way and although it does 
 not give the stockholder any actual control in the busi- 
 ness, yet it does give him a certainly of not being tossed 
 
104 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 into the discard wlien he has played his hand to the best 
 of his ability. 
 
 But the man who owns his own business without the 
 annoyance of any outsider is the happy man. The man 
 who, when he fits a pair of spectacles and fits them well 
 knowing that all the resultant business from this satis- 
 factory job is going to pile the dollars in his own pocket, 
 is the fellow who can look the world in the eye and tell 
 it to go to the deuce ! 
 
 If you must have money make out a statement of 
 your liabilities and assets and take them to your banker 
 and show the whole proposition to him. Then, if he 
 refuses to loan you what you need, you may be pretty 
 positive that the plan you have in mind is not a good one 
 and you had better abandon it. 
 
 Sink or swim, live or die, on your own merits is the 
 better plan and leave partnerships and stock companies 
 alone; but of the two evils, if you must choose one, choose 
 the lesser which, without doubt, is the stock company. 
 
 Above all things, if you go into a partnership or a 
 stock company, hire a good lawyer and pay him a good 
 price to look after your interests in the matter. More 
 men have lost money signing papers they did not under- 
 stand than most any other way. Pay a lawyer to look 
 into them before you sign. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 EMPLOYES AND WINNERS. 
 
 There are two points on which I desire to caution 
 every young man who has just cracked the shell of an 
 employe and launched into the business world on his own 
 hook. 
 
 The very first one of all is the handling of your own 
 employes. The average proprietor of an optical store 
 does not handle his own employes as he wished to be 
 handled when he was on the pay roll himself. An op- 
 tician may be a good manager, have good people hired, 
 and pay them good salaries, and yet fail in one partic- 
 ular. His co-workers are of infiaitely greater importance 
 to him than the people to whom he sells his goods. He 
 gives the people to whom he sells his spectacles a dollar's 
 worth of value for every dollar they put into his cash 
 register, and yet you would consider yourself a poor 
 salesman if you did not add to that dollar 's value a little 
 kindness, a few pleasant words, a little bit of flattery. 
 Why can you not do the same with your employes! 
 
 There is a sort of service which money will not buy 
 from the people who work for you. It is the sort of serv- 
 ice which makes a man come back after work hours to 
 look after something without being told. It is the sort 
 of service which keeps your employes rooting for the 
 store both during business hours and outside of it. It 
 
106 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 is the sort of service which makes an employe speak a 
 good word for the store when out in public and solicit 
 patronage for it. Mere salary will not get this service, 
 but a few kind words, a little bit of subtle flattery, or a 
 little interest in their private affairs will. 
 
 If you have a boy in your place who is interested in 
 baseball it will do you no harm and him a lot of good if 
 you will ask him what he thinks of the latest recruit on 
 the home team, if you speak to him about the game of 
 the day before, or if you call his attention to some play 
 made by a player you know to be a favorite of his. 
 
 If one of the boys in your place has a motor boat 
 or a canoe and you happen across a story or an article 
 in some of your papers or magazines on the subject which 
 is his particular hobby, it is very little trouble for you 
 to bring it to him. 
 
 If one of your employes has a new wife or a new 
 baby, it is the least that you can do to make inquiry from 
 time to time as to the progress of his family and let him 
 open up and tell you about it. 
 
 These are small things — simply the common courte- 
 sies of life — and yet how seldom do you see an employer 
 with business sense enough to use them as a means to 
 tie his clerks to him with bonds of steel. 
 
 Don't think for a moment that they are not working 
 the same game on you. Don't imagine because you hap- 
 pen to be the "boss" that the boys are not handing you 
 what the kids in the street call "bull con," for you are 
 getting it every day of your life. You need not sniff; 
 It's true! ^Vhy not pay them back in their own coin! 
 
 Foolishness? Beneath your dignity? Let me tell 
 you that this is the sort of foolishness which binds a 
 
EMPLOYES AND WINNERS 1U7 
 
 business house closer together than all the money in the 
 world can bind it. It's the sort of foolishness which 
 begets what the French call esprit de corps and what 
 the baseball fans call team work, the kind that mere 
 money will not buy ; that long pull and strong pull alto- 
 gether in the interest of the firm which makes a winner 
 out of any optical establishment from the little two-man 
 store to the big shop employing several hundred men. 
 
 The second point which I wish to particularly call 
 to attention is the matter of your associates outside of 
 business hours. My experience has been that men are 
 just about as broad as the company they keep. 
 
 If you find a man who associates with big men in 
 the business world, men who do things on a $10,000 scale, 
 you will find he is a bigger, more up-to-date, broader 
 gauge man that the one who spends his time with the 
 little fellows. 
 
 It's an odd fact that not one man in ten selects his 
 associates. He will carefully pick his clerks, his trousers, 
 his wife, his partner or his plug tobacco, but his asso- 
 ciates, who have the greatest effect on his moral charac- 
 ter and mental makeup, come to him in an absolutely hap- 
 hazard manner. 
 
 This is worth a little thought from any man in busi- 
 ness. Why not pick some friends among men who have 
 made a success in the race of life — men of affairs, win- 
 ners? Get out and mix with the winners, for success is 
 contagious and you may catch it. Attend the meetings 
 of your optical society, your board of trade, your busi- 
 ness organizations of all descriptions and your ideas as 
 well as your business will feel the broadening and expand- 
 ing influence of these associations. 
 
108 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 Creeping into the lives of opticians everywhere is 
 the realization that co-operation is better than competi- 
 tion, frankness better than secrecy and square dealing 
 better than crookedness : that a competitor is not of nec- 
 essity a villain and an enemy. 
 
 Agreements between competitors as to business hours, 
 exchange of credit information and a general business 
 friendliness is the tendency of the times, and the most 
 successful men are the men who are leaders in these 
 movements. 
 
 This idea is fostered by commercial organizations 
 of every description, and the optician who holds out of 
 these organizations because of the small expense entailed 
 will shed many bitter dollars in the long run, although 
 he may save pennies in the beginning. 
 
 Birds of a feather flock together and a business man 
 is known by the company he keeps. 
 
 Get these two principles deeply impressed on your 
 mind and it will make your road to business success an 
 infinitely easier one. There is a road which runs between 
 the two points Prosperity and Adversity and the time 
 made on this road is the fastest known in the world. The 
 thoughts which I have tried to implant here are two good 
 pushes out of the station of Adversity toward the goal 
 of Prosperity, and if you will acce^it the boost you will 
 find that you will arrive at the new station much more 
 quickly than you otherwise would. 
 
 Develop unity of purpose and house loyalty in your 
 clerks and then get out among the real big men of your 
 line, and you will find that you have perfected a machine 
 at home and abroad which will withstand the shocks of 
 dull times and slow seasons. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 CHASING RAINBOWS. 
 
 I don't know of anything that will make a child lose 
 so much of the enjoyment he gets ont of his regular play 
 as to chase to the end of the rainbow to find the fabled 
 pot of gold which lies just where its end touches the 
 ground. The poor little fellow believing in the fable will 
 chase through brambles and tear his clothes; he will 
 wade through swamps and get his feet wet and take cold, 
 and he will bruise and hurt himself falling over the stones 
 and rough places only to find at the end of the journey, 
 when worn and tired, that he had just as well kept on 
 with his play as the end of the rainbow is further away 
 than when he started. 
 
 This is all called to mind by watching the young 
 optometrist and his foolish belief in the fables of the 
 ' ' get-rich-quick ' ' man and his hundreds of foolish stories 
 of fabulous wealth which lies just ahead at the end of 
 the rainbow, and I have seen many an optometrist who 
 had returned from the chase with money gone, business 
 neglected, and an air of discouragement and sick-heart- 
 edness which makes me almost feel like preaching a ser- 
 mon with "Stick to your business" for a text! 
 
 Whenever I see a young optometrist looking at the 
 stock quotations in the daily paper I begin to wonder 
 what the place will bring when the auctioneer gets to his 
 
110 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 "Third and last call! Going, going, gone! Sold to the 
 little man with a wart on his nose over there in the cor- 
 ner ! ' ' 
 
 I know just how you feel about it so don't talk back 
 to me! "Just a little flyer. Just a few shares on mar- 
 gin." I have heard it so often that I can recite it by 
 heart! I had just as soon see a friend of mine with a 
 hypodermic needle loaded with morphia shooting it into 
 his arm, "just for fun," or see him in a hop joint hitting 
 the pipe just for a lark ! The man who fools with stocks 
 on margin is chasing a rainbow and at its end is rags 
 and tatters and misery. 
 
 I have watched the butcher, the baker and the can- 
 dlestick maker, and all the other fellows who buy and 
 sell for gain, and I have seen few who are not pessimistic 
 about the business in which they are engaged. Some 
 maker of aphorisms has said that a pessimist is a fellow 
 who of two evils chooses both and all optometrists agree 
 that the optical business is the worst on earth and all 
 too frequently they begin to look around for some rain- 
 bow to chase. 
 
 Maybe they turn their attention to the stock market ; 
 maybe it is the man with the hand book on the races; 
 maybe it is sitting up all night trying to catch the caudal 
 appendage to a Robert-tailed flush; maybe it is the pur- 
 chase of some shares in a new patent, but no matter what 
 form the rainbow chasing assumes it is an indication 
 that the optometrist who begins it is standing at the top 
 of a tobaggon slide with grease on the seat of his trousers 
 and business oblivion at the foot. 
 
 In the first place there is no greater indication that 
 an optometrist does not know half about his own busi- 
 
CHASING RAIXBOWS 111 
 
 ness or he would not be looking with such longing and 
 envy at other lines. 
 
 There is no better business than the optical busi- 
 ness ! Read that line again. 
 
 Take it from any angle you choose there is no occu- 
 pation on the top of God's green earth that offers so 
 many inducements. If a man is seeking to do good to 
 humanity there is no better opportunity than to relieve 
 eye suffering and no profession on earth which is in such 
 general need of elevation from the slough of low prices, 
 incompetent refracting and rotten mechanical work! 
 There is room and board both at the top of every profes- 
 sion and this of ours is no exception. 
 
 There are no styles or seasons in this business. Goods 
 bought ten years ago are as good to sell as if bought yes- 
 terday and the goods which sell in early and late seasons 
 bother the optometrist not at all, where the dealer in 
 wearing apparel of all sorts must sell his spring goods 
 by the first of Jirne or know that they will lie on his 
 hands till next June only to face the certainty that next 
 June will find the goods so out of style as to render them 
 unsalable. 
 
 In the line of food stuffs, the merchant must sell his 
 stuff before it grows stale and unfit to eat and there is 
 no line which does not have its worries of this sort save 
 ours. 
 
 When it comes to profits there is likely no line which 
 pays so heavy a gross profit as the optical line. In com- 
 mon with all mercantile lines which require some profes- 
 sional skill, the profit is in proportion to the skill and 
 so taken from every possible angle I insist that a man 
 who cannot make good in this business had better not 
 
112 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 try another but had better begin to take in floors to scrub 
 and get out of business life entirely. 
 
 All a man has to do is to stick to it, study it and 
 play the game he knows without chasing rainbows, and 
 his success is certain. 
 
 They tell a tale of one optometrist who bought a sea 
 shore lot on speculation and when he went out one spring 
 to plant it in millet seed the tide was in and he came 
 back to town to trade his millet seed for halibut eggs, 
 and yet that man has the reputation of being a good 
 business man although I would no more trust such a fel- 
 low to handle my money than I would hold a cow for a 
 cock-eyed butcher to hit it in the head with an axe ! The 
 money he spent on the lot invested in advertising, a new 
 instrument for his examination room or a new grind- 
 stone in his shop, would have paid handsome dividends 
 but he had to chase the suburban real estate rainbow 
 with the usual result. 
 
 Stick to the game you know! Maude Adams makes 
 $100,000 a season and Dave Warfield is worth a million 
 dollars; but just imagine those two trying to run your 
 optical store ! They would make just about as much of 
 a success of it as you and your wife would of playing 
 the parts they play ; yet I doubt not that they would look 
 on the sweet peace of running your little optical store as 
 a haven of infinite rest just as you have sighed at times 
 for the plaudits of the multitude when you gazed on 
 some grand opera tenor cavorting around the stage ! Just 
 stop a minute and think how those bow legs of yours 
 would look encased in a pair of green silk tights! For 
 heaven's sake, take a tumble to yourself and quit chasing 
 rainbows ! 
 
CHASING RAINBOWS 113 
 
 It is the unattainable which ever haunts the corri- 
 dors of heart's desire. The lily fingered artist longs to 
 club a tow-headed mule over a ten-acre lot while the plow 
 boy dreams of disturbing the ambient in our legislative 
 halls. If either left his work to live his dream he would 
 hit old mother earth with a D. S. T. which, in the language 
 of the cub reporter, is dull, sickening thud ! Cut out the 
 rainbow chasing and study more about the adjustment 
 of a pair of Kryptoks so the patient can see through the 
 reading part without stepping as high as a string-halted 
 horse on the street ! 
 
 Put your mind on your business. Men all over the 
 country are riding in five thousand dollar automobiles 
 on the money they have made in the optical business but 
 they are not the men who have chased rainbows. They 
 are men who had their minds on their business. They 
 were not men of genius but men who worked like the 
 very devil at their own business. 
 
 I would not trust any optometrist who dabbled in 
 the stock market any more than I would allow a barber 
 to shave me while he was watching a dog fight across 
 the street, and the jobbers of this country feel the same 
 way about it! Any man who chases financial rainbows 
 is some day going to find his credit bad without knowing 
 why. The jobbing houses of this coimtry are not going 
 to allow him to play fool with their money. 
 
 There has never been a time in the history of the 
 world when good optometrists and good opticians were 
 in such demand! There has never been a time in the 
 history of the business when good work was so highly 
 appreciated and there has never been a time when the 
 public was so well educated to know good work when it 
 
114 THE BUSINESS SIDE OF OPTICS 
 
 sees it! This means that there was never a time in the 
 history of the world when there is so much opportunity 
 for a good man to make money and never a time when 
 the incompetent man had such tough sledding! If you 
 are not making money it's your own fault, and when you 
 acknowledge it you also acknowledge yourself an incom- 
 petent and a failure ! 
 
 Millions are being paid out every day by a weak-eyed 
 public to men who know the business, whose sole quali- 
 fication is that they know the work in which they are 
 engaged and are attending to it ! From the optical stores 
 of every city in the country is going up a cry for employes 
 who know their work well enough to be trusted with a 
 job of any importance! 
 
 But despite all these good conditions the optometrist 
 shows a disposition to become a rainbow chaser and it is 
 my endeavor to flag a few before the rails spread and a 
 little business is ditched somewhere in the great com- 
 mercial desert which is filled with the whitening bones 
 of financial rainbow chasers! 
 
 The man who builds an optical business in these 
 days of cut prices and department store competition must 
 eschew pin pool and poker; he must cut out the hand 
 book and the stock market ; he must duck the bang-tailed 
 ponies and the stock company promoters, and study the 
 optical business from the chemical composition of the 
 glass which goes into the lenses to their results on the 
 nose of the ultimate wearer ! 
 
 When he sells a tortoise shell frame he must be able 
 to give the maiden name of the mother of the turtle on 
 which it grew and the exact location of the puddle in 
 which it was caught! T\Tien he sells a pair of smoked 
 
CHASING RAINBOWS 115 
 
 glasses lie must be able to tell who smoked them and 
 why! He must know the game from soup to nms and 
 the only way he can hope to do so is to keep his mind 
 on it early and late and not on the pot of gold at the end 
 of some financial rainbow ! 
 
 All that the public demands of you is that you be 
 the best optometrist in your town. If you serve them 
 just a little better than the other fellow, then you will 
 have success ! In the markets of this world money was 
 never so cheap as right now! It was never so easy to 
 get as right now ! People were never so willing to spend 
 it as they are this minute! It all lies with you whether 
 you get it or not and all you need to do is to put in the 
 time you waste thinking over rainbow projects and use it 
 in studying your own business and you will win. 
 
 The maker of maxims is merely a tailor of truth. He 
 rarely has the figure to wear gracefully the garments he 
 makes. I know the reason I am not doing all the optical 
 business in my own city is because I am not enough bet- 
 ter than the other fellows who are here. In common with 
 you and the rest of them I am getting all I deserve ! But 
 I do know this, that I am eating regularly and do not 
 owe a dollar in the world, and what I have I got by stick- 
 ing to spectacles and every time I have wandered off 
 after strange gods I have been stung! 
 
 Stick to the spectacles and win, chase the rainbows 
 and you lose ! 
 

 y 
 
 RETURN OPTOMETRY LIBRARY 
 
 TO^^ 490 Minor Hall 642-1020 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 '■•W-Z. 
 
 5 L 
 
 3 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 RENEWALS MAY BE REQUESTED BY PHONE 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 /WB=?=5=3Si6- 
 
 
 
 lllliill '"" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORM NO, DD 23, 2.5m, 12/80 BERKELEY, CA 94720 ^^ 
 
UC, BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
Mm