Alex, Salesman

From letter dated March 9, 1960

The first of the year Alex sent in a coupon asking for a sample sales-kit for greeting cards. I was awfully dubious about it since they usually are pretty shoddy, but I didn’t tell him so. I figured that if he were interested, he might as well go ahead and find out for himself.

As it turned out, he was right and I was wrong; the outfit has the Good Housekeeping seal. Besides the boxes of greeting cards (which, as I suspected, were not particularly attractive), they handle inexpensive name-on stationery similar to what you can get in most department stores for $1.25 to $1.50 a box, gift paper, all sorts of note paper in varying designs, and an assortment of novelty items…including a very attractive gold-embossed-white-plastic-covered combination address, telephone, Christmas-card list, and anniversaries record book for $1.50. The last is really handsome and has been a fine seller for him.

Anyway, Alex set out around the neighborhood while I sat home with my fingers crossed. He was back within half an hour brandishing a five-dollar bill and asking for change. He had made a $3.00 sale…some imprinted stationery and one of the address books. He made another similar sale later that afternoon. Actually, he has yet to go out selling without making at least one sale.

He does not work at it too consistently and I don’t urge him to. This is his own project and he’ll enjoy it most and stay with it longest if he can follow it at his own rate of speed. Then too, after he had sent in two orders to the company, I was willing to have him hold off until we got at least one shipment back so we could be sure everything was in order.

One thing please me a lot. Alex started studying all the printed material that had been sent to him with his initial order and discovered that he could get a 50% discount on samples. He decided to reinvest part of his profits in samples, figuring that he might make more sales and, if he didn’t, he still could sell off the samples themselves for a 50% profit. All of this he worked out without any help from me, though I did advise him on which things to order, having a better idea than he did about which looked like good sellers.

The box with his new samples arrived in the mail today and I can’t wait for Alex to get home from school and open it.

Incidentally, the envelope I’m mailing this in is one of his items…a special that gives you 100 envelopes with your name imprinted for $1.00. That’s the same price I’ve been paying for the stamped envelopes I buy from the Post Office and they are ideal for letters and for mailing checks, so I ordered 200 from him.