Made for a Colder Winter

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the spring after the mildest winter anybody could remember, two hatters on the same street found themselves with the same problem, and only one of them explained it.

Two hatters with a winter left unsold,
Same felt, same shelves, a third off both.
One wrote the price and nothing more,
One wrote the reason underneath.
The cut was equal to the penny.
Which shop still had its prices by the autumn?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two hat shops in the town I've never named, a dozen doors apart on the street that ran down to the river. Both made their own felt hats in the back, both had made them heavily the previous summer, and both had been waiting all autumn for a cold that never came. The frost held off until nearly February and was gone in a week. By the end of March each hatter had some forty good winter hats on his shelves, well made, a little heavy for the season, and wanted by nobody.

Both decided on the same remedy, and both chose a third off. Forty hats in a cupboard until October are money doing nothing, and felt that sits in the damp is felt that spoils.

The first hatter had a card painted for his window in good red letters: Great Reductions, A Third Off. He put it in on a Monday and waited.

People noticed the card, but not quite in the way he intended. A card like that asks a question and does not answer it, and the town supplied its own answers. Some thought the hats must have a fault. Some thought the hatter was in difficulty, and a man in difficulty might not be there to mend a brim next year. Several thought, reasonably, that a man who takes off a third in April may take off half in May, and decided to wait and see. He sold a dozen hats in three weeks, mostly to strangers.

The worse harm was done on the shelf beside it. His summer straws and his best silk hats carried their ordinary prices, and those prices now looked like an opening position. A regular customer who had paid his full price for eleven years asked what he could do on a silk. The hatter had never been asked that before. He was asked it several more times before the summer was out.

The second hatter took off the same third, but he wrote his card by hand and it said rather more. Forty felt hats, made last summer for a hard winter that never arrived. They are too good to keep in a damp cupboard and too heavy to sell in June. A third off each until the last one goes, and then no more until next winter.

The hats were sound; the card said so, and it said why they were cheap in words that were plainly true, since everybody in the town had spent the winter remarking on the weather. The hatter was not in difficulty. He had simply guessed wrong about the frost, like every farmer in the district. People repeated the card to each other, because it was a small true story about the winter. The offer would end, and would end for a reason anybody could see, so waiting for a better one made no sense. He had sold thirty-one hats by the end of April and the rest by the middle of May.

His silk hats, sitting a few feet away at their ordinary price, were not touched by any of it. The reduction had a cause, and the cause belonged to forty felt hats and to one mild winter. It said nothing whatever about his other prices, and so nobody drew anything from them.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A reduction without a reason is read as weakness, so give every offer a true reason, and let the reason belong to the offer alone. A customer who sees a lower price does two things at once. He wants the bargain, and he asks why it exists. If you do not tell him, he will answer the question himself, and the answers available to him are nearly all bad: the goods are faulty, the trade is failing, the old price was padded, or the next price will be lower still. Each of those costs you something, and the last two cost you for years.

A true reason closes all four doors. It explains the goods, so they are not suspected. It explains you, so you are not pitied. It explains why the ordinary price is the ordinary price, because the discount now has a cause that your ordinary work does not share. And it sets its own limit, since forty hats run out and a mild winter does not repeat on request.

The reason also sells, which is the part most people miss. A bare figure gives the reader a number to consider; a reason gives him a picture, and people act on pictures. It is the same principle that makes the fault you admit sell the rest: a seller who explains himself is believed about everything else.

This applies to every offer you make, not only to clearing stock. The introductory price needs a reason, which is why a fifth off the first order so often teaches the customer the wrong lesson about your work. So does the quiet-month rate, the bundle, the price held for an old client. If you cannot say in one sentence why this is cheaper, you are not ready to make it cheaper.

Two cautions. First, the reason must be true, and it must be checkable by the ordinary sense of the person reading it. The shop that has been closing down for three years has taught its whole town that its reasons are furniture. One invented reason, found out, makes every true one after it worthless. Second, a reason that comes round every month is no longer a reason. It is a price. If your sale has a cause that recurs as reliably as the rent, the market will treat the sale price as the real one, and it will be right.

Three questions, before the next time you lower a price:

1. Why is this cheaper, in one sentence a customer could repeat? If the sentence is about you needing money, find a better reason or do not make the offer. If it is about the goods, the season or the circumstance, write it down plainly.
2. When does the reason run out? A good reason ends of its own accord, when the stock goes or the circumstance passes. Say so, and then honour it.
3. What does the reason say about my ordinary price? Read it as your best customer would. If it leaves your usual prices standing, use it. If it makes them look like an asking price, think again.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which shop still had its prices by the autumn?

The one that wrote the reason underneath. Both hatters gave away the same third on the same hats, and only one of them gave away something more. The first hatter's silent card let the town decide why he was cheap, and the town decided he was cheap in general. The second hatter's card fastened the discount to one winter and forty hats, and when both were gone, the discount went with them and his ordinary prices were exactly where he had left them.

The verse:

A price cut bare invites a guess,
And guesses seldom run your way.
So write the reason on the card,
And let it end the day it should.

Until next time. Go and look at the last offer you made, and write beneath it the one true sentence that explains why it exists.

P.S. People will agree to a request far more readily when it comes with a reason, and it has been observed that the reason need hardly be a good one for the effect to hold. Do not take that as permission to give thin reasons. Take it as evidence of how much the reader wants one, and how poorly he thinks of you when he is given none.

Also in the archive: The Draper's Three Days, The Carrier Who Charged Half and What Your Price Says Before You Do.