The Cart With the Barrels

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the toyshop before Christmas, where a man is buying something for a child he does not live with.

Two shops both sell one wooden horse,
Same paint, same price, same carver's course.
One tells the man what horses do,
One asks him what the boy is like.
Same horse goes home in either case.
Why did one buyer come again?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two toy shops in the town I've never named, and their goods, in the old chorus, were equally well made. Into each came an uncle, in December, wanting something for a nephew he saw twice a year and did not know well.

The first shopkeeper sold him the horse, and sold it properly: the wood, the paint, the joints that would not come apart, the fact that it was made in the town. All true, and all about the horse.

The uncle bought it, because it was a good horse, and went away with a private worry he had walked in with and was leaving with still: that the boy might open it and be politely disappointed, and that his sister would say it was lovely in the voice people use.

That worry was the whole of his afternoon, and nobody in the shop had noticed it or touched it.

So the horse was given, and received about as well as such things are, and the following December the uncle stood in the street and could not remember whether that shop had been any good, since nothing about the visit had attached itself to him. He went into the other one.

Where the shopkeeper, three years earlier, had asked a different sort of question of a different uncle in the identical difficulty. How old is he, and what does he do when he is left alone in a room?

The uncle did not entirely know, which is itself an answer, and between them they arrived at a boy of six who liked to line things up. So not the horse, said the shopkeeper, but this cart with the barrels that come out, because a boy who lines things up will have those barrels in a row on the hearth within the hour.

Then two further things, neither of which cost anything. A word on the label, written while the uncle watched, saying who it was from. And a sentence as he left: if he is not taken with it, bring it back in January and we will change it, and nobody need know.

Note what the second shop actually sold. Not a cart. It sold an uncle the reasonable expectation of a good moment on Christmas morning, and a way out if the moment went wrong, which is what he had come in wanting and could not have asked for.

He came back every year for eleven years, and brought his brother-in-law, and at no point did either of them think of themselves as loyal customers of a toy shop. They simply knew where to go when they did not know what to buy.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

When somebody is buying for another person, they are not buying the thing. They are buying the moment when it is handed over. And that moment is what they are anxious about, since the risk is not that the goods are poor but that the gift misses, in front of people, and says something unintended about how well they know the person they are giving it to.

So the questions that sell are not about the article. They are about the recipient, and they should be the sort a buyer can answer without embarrassment: how old, what do they do when left alone, what did they like last year, what have they already got too many of. A buyer who cannot answer those is telling you something useful, which is that he needs your judgement rather than your range, and will be grateful to be given it plainly.

Then remove the fear of the miss, which is the piece almost every trade leaves lying on the counter. Say it plainly: if it does not suit, bring it back in January and we will change it, and nobody need know. It costs you very little, since few return anything, and it converts a nervous purchase into an easy one. It is the seedsman's guarantee applied not to the goods but to the giver's dignity.

And do the small things that belong to the handing over rather than the article: the label written while he watches, the wrapping, the word about what to say when it is given. Those cost minutes and they are the part he cannot do himself, being a man who does not know what a boy of six is like.

Two cautions. Do not use the questions to push him upward, since a buyer who suspects his nephew is being used to sell him a dearer thing will not return. And remember that the person who receives is not the person who pays, so both need serving: the child must like the cart, and the uncle must feel he chose well, and a shop that attends to only one of those has done half a job.

Three questions, and think about the last gift sold in your trade:

1. How often is your buyer buying for somebody else? Weddings, Christmas, new houses, retirements, a wife ordering for a husband. Count it. In many trades it is a third of the year and is served exactly like the rest.
2. What do you ask about the person who will receive it? If the answer is nothing, you are selling articles to a man whose actual problem is that he does not know somebody well enough.
3. What is your January sentence? The plain, quiet way out if the gift misses. Write it, say it at the door, and watch what it does to the size of what people are willing to choose.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did one buyer come again?

Because one shop sold him a horse and the other sold him Christmas morning. The uncle's difficulty was never the quality of the toy, which he was perfectly able to judge; it was that he did not know the boy, and was afraid of it showing. One shopkeeper spoke about joints and paint to a man who was not worried about joints and paint. The other asked what the child did when left alone in a room, and handed him a cart with barrels and a way out in January, and was remembered for eleven years for about four minutes of attention.

The verse:

He does not fear the toy is poor,
He fears the face that opens it.
Ask what the child is like, and then
Say: bring it back, and none shall know.

Until next time. Go and write the two questions you will ask anybody buying for somebody else, and the sentence that gives them a way out.

P.S. The same holds in trade, where a man buying for his firm is buying for the people who will have to live with his choice, and fears the same thing in a duller coat: not that the goods are poor, but that he will look as though he chose badly in front of colleagues. Every reassurance you give him about that is worth more than another fact about the goods.

Also in the archive: The Man Who Was Not There, Most People Ask Me That and The Seedsman's Sentence.