BUREAU AIDS RETAIL TRADESMEN

The University Bureau of Business Research, established in 1911 by the Graduate School of Business Administration "to gather facts about business for purposes of instruction," is undertaking a work as novel as it is important. The task of investigating the various branches of the retail trade with the view of helping the small retailers to conduct their business at low cost and to cope with large and better organized competitors is no small one, but already noteworthy results have been produced. In an article entitled "Scientific Business," which appeared in a recent number of "The New Republic", Mr. Melvin Thomas Copeland '09, Instructor in Marketing in the Business School, describes the work of the Bureau.

The efforts of the Bureau were at first directed upon an investigation of Market distribution, concerning which "there was and still is a dearth of accessible information."

Retailer Misunderstood.

The most important subject under the general head of market distribution is the retail business. Each year many inexperienced men become retailers, and each year many in experienced men become retailers, and each year thousands of these retailers fail. The business of store-keeping is so commonplace that people do not hesitate to embark in it and they are highly surprised if they fail. "To sell a pound of nails or a package of coffee," says Mr. Copeland, "appears so simple that the problems of buying, selling, stock-handling, accounting and managing are over-looked. The general public, on its side, shows its ignorance of these problems by talking lightly of middleman elimination. Although twenty to thirty-five percent. of the price paid by the consumer does goes to the retailer, the services of the latter are far from being dispensable. It is much easier to say that his profit is too high than to show how his expenses can be reduced. "As manufacturers and wholesalers are themselves sentially closely connected with the retail trade, the thorough study of the business is one of wide-spread interest and the results are vitally important to the success of business education.