NEW ZEALAND GOODS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 660, 11 May 1929, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND GOODS

EASIER MADE THAN SOLD WHERE THE MANUFACTURER FALLS DOWN (Written for THE S UN) Criticism, like castor oil, is something we prefer to administer rather than receive. Home truths wound us in our tenderest spot—our self-esteem—and the resentment they engender is just as likely to confirm us in our errors as effect our reformation. Still, at the risk of offending the local manufacturer, who thinks he is really a. very clever person when he is far from it, the writer wants to stress one or two points on the subject of locally made products that seem to him to be receiving less attention than they deserve. The movement for fostering and developing local industry is praiseworthy in the extreme. It seems to offer the only adequate solution to the old problem of how to use our natural resources to the greatest advantage; how to provide congenial’and remunerative employment, for the annual draft of young people leaving school to face the world, and how to expand quickly the wealth and material prosperity of the country. Farming won’t do it because the prospects of quick success are uninviting and the inclination to tackle the job is almost lacking. But, unfortunately, this does not appear to be the conception of manufacturers themselves. When they seek political means to secure a tangible advantage in the shape of higher duties on imports many of them are not sincere: they are asking the public to help them, but they are shirking their own duties and responsibilities. The theory of Protection is based on the principle that, where practicable, goods should be produced in the country where they are consumed. In other words, if the foreign manufacturer wants to exploit our market let him bring his capital here, set up his plant, comply with the law’s of the country and make his contribution to the cost of running it. A tariff is ineffective unless it furnishes the foreigner with the inducement to do this, or results in an expansion of output from plants already operating, so as to obviate the necessity for imports. FLAYING A. DOUBLE GAME

The manufacturer in some instances is playing a double game. One does not require to look very far to find manufacturers who have gone into the importing business themselves. Take the boot industry. What is the use of the manufacturer asking for protection when one is the importer and distributor of Czecho-Slovakian footwear, another represents one of the largest English manufacturers and another is sending money to America for boots, while boot operatives in New Zealand are working short time? The Czecho-Slovakian manufacturer, who can draw cheap hides from Russia and can utilise low-wage labour, has become, since the war, one of the greatest exporters of footwear in the world. It is a tribute to the efficiency of his method and organisa*'--' that h*--can sell his goods also in Britain and the United States. New Zealand sells next to nothing to Czecho-Slovakia and it is poor economy to spend our money to keep Czecho-Slovakians in work while our own kith and kin are unemployed. A similar state of affairs exists in the ready-made clothing trade. Manufacturers who ought to be chiefly interested, in turning our own wool into clothing, seem to have no scruples about importing ready-mad© suits, with the result that half the sewing machines in our own clothing factories are idle. It is about time the Minister of Customs intervened and called for a show down. Manufacturers should be told that they cannot have it both ways, and that if they will not make it their sole business to develop the industry for which they seek: protection, it may be withdrawn altogether. PO OTZ SALESMANSHIP But the’ chief reason why New Zealand made goods are not purchased more freely is that the local manufacturer is so exceedingly inefficient when it comes to selling and distributing his products.

He seems to labour under the delusion that if he produces a good article, it will sell itself. Nothing is farther from the truth. The buying power exists mainly in congested centres of population which can only be fed. clothed and housed by a vast and complex distributing organisation, with the result that selling has become more important than production. The Western Canadian farmer whose corn is used for fuel instead of being ma.de into food for Eastern American cities furnishes an extreme example of a producer who fails completely to get into touch with a consumer. The local manufacturer who makes a good boot or a shirt and then complains that the public prefers an imported article deserves just about as much sympathy as the. Canadian farmer who grows a product and lacks the brains or cooperative effort to get it to a market. Production is relatively easv; selling and distribution call for a great deal more ability and resource. The simple soul who grows apples for less than a penny a pound, and then comes into town and sees them polished and arranged in tiers in a shop window at 4d, complains that he is the victim of gross exploitation. It is not true and he has only to change places with the retailer to find it out. The cost of handling, transport, storage, wastage, and all the things that have to be done to cater for the consumer frequently amounts to a great deal more than the article costs to produce, and when it comes to marketing a manufactured product, something more is necessary. Before a sale can be made a desire must be created in the mind of the prospective purchaser for the article. PUBLIC NOT UNSYMPATHETIC

The average man will concede readily enough that he should support local industry, but when he goes into a shop to buy a pair of boots, or a coat, a box of chocolates or a packet of cigarettes, he usually has a predilection for something he is familiar with, and even if his mind is not made up, it is much easier to sell him a brand that he knows by name than an unknown article. Sunlight soap, Bostock shoes, Beecham’s pills, Kayser hose, Wolsey underwear, Three Castles cigarettes, and a score of other names that are household words all over the British Empire, distinguish certain manufactured products from less known but perhaps equally good competitive lines, but a sustained and welldirected publicity, has educated the prospective purchaser, in spite of himself, regarding the merits of these particular goods. A MUCH-NEEDED LESSON

If some of our most prominent local manufacturers of ■woollen goods would go unknown into almost any mercer’s shop and try to buy their own products, they would learn quite a lot. The first thing they would discover, if they don’t know it already, is that the retailer cares nothing about the fiscal question, and never stops to think that, by pushing imported goods he is restricting the number of his customers, whereas by selling locally-made goods he would be increasing them. He is merely concerned about making a quick sale and turning his stock into cash at a profit. The next thing the manufacturer woYild discover is that few retailers carry stocks of locally-made goods; they prefer to keep one or two samples, and if the customer insists, as the writer did recently, the retailer offers to send out to the warehouse for the article. . Customers usually object to wait till a messenger returns from the wholesaler with a co.uple of einglet6.

or a few pairs of socks, and they are easily persuaded to buy an imported article instead. The question of price is less important than the publicity and the efficiency of the selling organisation. The purchasing power of the public is great and its extravagance a byword. The reason why people pay higher prices for imported goods is that the desire for them has been created by skilfully directed publicity, they are attractive, and the selling organisation almost amounts to genius. It should not be beyond the resource and intelligence of the New Zealand manufacturer to acquire the A.B.C. of selling. At any rate it is time he entered the kindergarten class and learned, first, that his product must i haye an identity: second, that he must J make people feel that they want it. and . third, that the prospective buyer must know* where he can get it. j P.S. J