« Vendre oblige » — L’Officiel du cycle, 3 May 1952, Philippe Girardet on How a Cycle and Motorcycle Dealer Sells

From L’Officiel du cycle, du motocycle et du camping, 3 May 1952, N° 18, the spring number, pages 5 and 7: ‘Vendre oblige’ by Philippe Girardet, president of the Chambre Syndicale Nationale du Cycle: how a cycle and motorcycle dealer sells (shop, window, advertising, children’s bicycles, accessories, repairs); portrait of the author. The title, headings, captions and lists are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page images carry it in full.

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” VENDRE OBLIGE “…

par M. Philippe GIRARDET

M. Philippe GIRARDET, qui joint à sa compétence industrielle et à ses fonctions de
Président de la ” Chambre Syndicale Nationale du Cycle” un remarquable talent d’écrivain —
son livre sur ” La connaissance des hommes ” en fait foi — a bien voulu mettre ici son expé-
rience au service de nos Lecteurs. Nous l’en remercions vivement.
“L’OFFICIEL”

[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. Girardet opens with a definition well known among sales specialists, which he quotes: selling means making people buy goods that will not come back through customers who will come back. He reads in this joke two basic principles of all selling: getting a customer to buy goods and, at the same time, binding that customer to the shop. Selling alone is not enough; the buyer must also be fully satisfied with the supplier. Every business, even the simplest, needs some advertising, just as Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose without knowing it. A shop that opens onto the street makes itself known to passersby and neighbors, and anything more, such as a tract, a prospectus or an announcement, costs money. A satisfied customer is a free advertising agent: he will come back to the same dealer in preference to any other and will also bring in new customers by telling his friends and acquaintances, and in this way solid and loyal clienteles are built, an indestructible capital that gives value to a business.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a three-star break. A second saying holds that one dissatisfied customer makes more noise than twenty satisfied ones, because people voice their bad temper more readily than they hand out praise. The problem of selling therefore comes down to two chapters, the organization of the sale itself and the organization of the “Service” to the customer. A short article cannot treat both in depth, so the author limits himself to a few general views suited to the cycle and motorcycle trade.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a second three-star break. The dealer’s main selling tool is his shop, and its general look matters greatly: a façade painted in bright colors, a well arranged window and good, plentiful lighting give a favorable first impression. The window should hold only a few well presented things, for example one fine luxury bicycle with a few chosen accessories, since experiments have shown that too many objects scatter attention and lessen the window’s advertising value; it should be renewed at least every fifteen days, showing in turn a motorized bicycle, a racing bicycle, a new motorcycle and so on. As far as possible the repair workshop should be kept apart from the shop, which receives customers and should stay tidy and well planned, with a few seats, a table and sports magazines.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a third three-star break. All selling calls for advertising. A motorcycle or bicycle dealer has no large budget, but he can organize his publicity without great expense. He must first know his customers, noting name and address whenever possible and building a small customer file for the day a circular announces a new model. He should seek the young customers and take the sale of children’s bicycles seriously, since the eight-year-old will later buy a bicycle and perhaps a motorcycle; a modest advertising effort, such as a circular, a notice in the local papers or an exhibition, should be made at two times of year, in December for Christmas presents and around May for rewards for exams and holidays. Posting the sports results every week is an excellent advertisement, teaching the young the way to the shop, and a link with the local sports societies is also good publicity.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a fourth three-star break. The dealer should also think of selling accessories, whose margin is far above that on machines and which entail almost no expense. Repair is a difficult problem: labor burdened with social charges now reaches very high rates, so the dealer should not expect repairs to be a source of profit and should be content to cover his overhead. The repair shop is nevertheless indispensable for keeping and satisfying customers. It should be regarded as a form of advertising, with the fairest rates; if customers are surprised at a price, the dealer should explain its reasons by comparing it with their own trade. The article continues on a later page.]

[A full page of printed text with one photograph. At the upper left is a square halftone portrait, head and shoulders, of a bald or close-cropped man in heavy dark round-rimmed glasses and a dark jacket, looking slightly downward with a faint smile. Across the head of the page stands the title in large, widely spaced sans-serif capitals between quotation marks and followed by three dots, with the byline “par M. Philippe GIRARDET” in italic sans-serif beneath it at the right. Under the byline an italic editor’s note, signed “L’OFFICIEL” in italic capitals, introduces the author. The article is set in two justified columns of sans-serif type, the left column opening with a raised initial letter, and short groups of three small stars arranged as a triangle mark the breaks between sections. No advertisement, artist signature or agency mark appears.]

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[Ebykr summary, continuing “Vendre oblige” from the earlier page; the article’s text is not reproduced. Another important question is the warranty. It is often hard, when a defect or damage appears on a recently delivered machine, to decide how much the customer is responsible, and the defect frequently comes from carelessness, which leads to tiresome arguments. Girardet nevertheless urges the dealer to be very generous on this point. He recalls a famous bicycle dealer, his old friend Célestin Gambade of Bayonne, who used to proclaim in the accent of the banks of the Adour that the customer is the good Lord and is always right.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a three-star break. Only good machines and carefully chosen accessories should be sold, and not deceiving the customer about quality is a merchant’s first duty. It is a frequent error to think price is the only selling argument; the true price is the sum paid divided by the length of the object’s use. In a study he once wrote for his own amusement on the price of clothing, Girardet reached odd conclusions, for example that underwear costs more than suits. A well built bicycle of a leading make may cost 15 or 20 percent more at purchase than a cheap one and still be cheaper to own, because it resells for more and lasts much longer; the old saying holds that cheapness is always too dear. The dealer must therefore defend his price and refuse any discount. It is better to grant a small advantage outside the price than to give up the principle of the fixed price, and a competitor who slashes his tariffs is certain to end in bankruptcy. Defending prices is all the more necessary because discounts, in the bicycle trade as in the motorcycle trade, are lower than they once were, and the author advises against complaining of that. A large discount tempts short-sighted dealers to give part of it away in the hope of raising turnover, which brings disorder to the market that harms everyone, and a customer who paid full price is furious to learn of a rebate given to another. Price-cutting means the loss of the clientele.]

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[Ebykr summary, after a second three-star break. In a book he wrote some time ago, the author said that in business the supreme skill is still loyalty: loyalty to the customer, to the firms the dealer represents and to himself, which he calls the surest pledge of success. The years just lived through saw all the old values vanish; goods sold themselves because they were scarce, and unscrupulous occasional dealers, marked by him with a question mark in parentheses, infested the market. Those times are over, true and healthy competition has returned, and the only factors of success are those of the past centuries: a solidly established reputation for honesty and loyalty, scrupulous respect for commitments, a clientele made loyal by good service, steady work and, in a word, love of one’s trade.]

Philippe GIRARDET.

[A column of printed text only, with no photograph, drawing, advertisement or agency mark. The article is set in a single justified column of sans-serif type with an indented first line to each paragraph, and a few phrases, such as the dealers’ sayings, are in italic. Two groups of three small stars arranged as a triangle stand centered between the sections. The signature “Philippe GIRARDET.” is set in the same type at the lower right, below the last paragraph.]