Stay Half a Step Ahead, Not a Mile

“Every big success, individual or commercial, has followed that rule. The manufacturer who merely caters to his market is never a very big manufacturer. The vital point is: “How far shall I keep ahead of the public?” If one goes too far ahead, the public will lose sight of him. That has been the unhappy fate of many brilliant men. There is only one way that I know to determine the exact lead to be taken, that is by thoroughly knowing the whole market and its trends. We devote a great deal of attention to finding out, not only what the public wants and what it may need, but also just how ready it is to absorb new ideas. We achieve our results: first, by keeping our eyes wide open all the time and putting down all the information that comes to hand; and, second, by never considering that we are marketing a fixed product. We have made a policy to be just a short distance ahead, for the cash register has always had to make its market. We had to educate our first customers; we have to educate our present-day customer; and our thought has always been to keep just so far ahead that education of the buyer will always be necessary. Thus the market will be peculiarly our own—our customers will feel that we are their natural teachers and leaders. Look for a moment at the progress. The first machine did nothing more than tally the cash by punching holes in a strip of paper. The proprietor by counting the holes could tell how much cash should be on hand. That was a cumbersome and unsatisfactory machine and it did not do nearly all that it should have done; but it did keep a tally. The big trouble was, however, that the proprietor had to depend upon his own additions to find the total. This brought in the possibility of mistake. The specific problem then was to make the machine keep the tally itself; thus developed the automatic adder. Instead of counting the pinholes, the proprietor now took off the totals from the 5-cent sales, the 10-cent sales, the 25-cent sales, and so on, and adding these together got the grand total for the day. His possibility of error was reduced to a mistake in adding the divisional totals. But why should not the machine make this addition? Then we brought out a model that made all the additions. The purpose of the cash register was to safeguard money. Money is not safeguarded without a system of bookkeeping that will provide a final check…”

“My idea of successful business is this: Fill not only every known want of your customers but also have in ready reserve that which you calculate they are going to need next year or the year after. That is, do not merely keep up with the market but preferably a few paces ahead in what…”