Yours Until Tuesday

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, two basket makers came by the same parcel of fine white willow in the same February, enough for twenty-four market baskets apiece, and both asked three and six for each of them.

Two basket makers, the same town, the same white willow cut in the same February,
The same twenty-four market baskets, the same three and six asked for every one.
One had handbills printed and pasted up on the Saturday, and told the whole town at once.
One wrote forty short notes on the Monday before, and told the town nothing until they were answered.
Both had sold the lot by the end of March, and neither man took a penny off his price.
Why did only one of them finish the spring holding something worth more than the baskets?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two basket makers in the town I've never named. Both worked sitting on the floor with the rods across their knees, as the trade requires, and both made the ordinary run of things: laundry skips, a cradle now and then, bushel baskets for the orchards in September. Both bought their willow from the same beds by the river, and that February both were offered the same parcel of peeled white willow, pale as a new candle, the kind that comes in once in three or four years. Enough for twenty-four market baskets each, hooped handle and close weave, the sort a woman carries on her arm for twenty years. Three and six, a shilling above their common work.

The first basket maker did the sensible thing. He walked up to the printer on the Thursday, paid nine shillings for two hundred handbills, and by Saturday morning the whole town knew at once that there were two dozen fine white market baskets at the top of Spicer Lane. It was a good handbill. It said what the willow was, what the weave was, and what the price was.

The second basket maker did something that took him an hour and cost him fourpence. On the Monday before, he turned to the back of his day book, where the name of everyone who had bought from him in three years was written, and copied out forty short notes. Each said much the same. A parcel of white willow had come in, there would be twenty-four baskets and no more, and because the householder had bought from him before, she had first refusal for one week before anybody else in the town was told. She had only to send word, or call in on her way past.

By the Thursday, nineteen of the twenty-four were spoken for, eleven of them by Tuesday dinner. Nobody argued about three and six, because nobody was comparing. They were answering a letter addressed to them. The following Monday he told the rest of the town with a card in his window, and the card said that nineteen were gone, which was simply true. The last five went inside a fortnight.

The first man sold his two dozen as well, over six weeks, to strangers who came up the lane with a handbill in their hands, and he did not cut his price either. Be fair to him. The handbill worked and the baskets went, and he had reached two hundred households instead of forty, which is the arithmetic every one of us is taught.

Two things happened quietly all the same. He was nine shillings down and six weeks slower. And of those two hundred handbills, eleven went through the doors of people who had bought from him before, who learned of his best work of the year from a paper pasted to a wall at the same hour as everybody else. Two of them had bought baskets elsewhere that winter, nobody having told them there was a reason to wait.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Every piece of news you have goes out in some order, and the order is itself a message. The people who have already paid you should hear it before the public does, and should be told plainly that they are hearing it first. Most trades never choose that order at all. The news goes out in whatever shape the printer or the window or the feed decides, and the customer of three years standing learns it at the same moment as a stranger who has never spent a penny. You did not mean to tell her she was no different from the street, and you told her anyway.

Why it works is not mysterious. The people in your own book are the only ones who have proved they will pay you, at your price, for your work. They need no convincing that your word is good, because the evidence is in the hall. Forty notes cost pennies and an hour, where two hundred strangers cost nine shillings and six weeks and answer in smaller proportion, which is the plain case for the cheapest list you already own.

The mechanism, though, is better than cheapness. First refusal is a thing of real value that costs you nothing to give. You are not giving away money. You are giving away order. The householder who opens that note has been moved, for one week, from the crowd to the inside. She buys sooner and argues less, and being told first is one of the few pieces of news a person enjoys repeating. When the week is up your public notice is stronger than any handbill, because you may now say with perfect honesty that most of them are gone. And a letter that has twice carried something worth having is opened the third time. That is all a list ever is: not a quantity of names, but a habit of being opened.

Two cautions. First, the privilege must be real, or it is a trick and will be found out in a season. A week's head start on something there is plenty of is no favour. If the quantity truly is limited, say the number. If it is not, give them something that is, such as first choice of the batch or the quiet hour before the doors open. Second, do not let first refusal become the only reason you ever write. A list that hears from you solely when there is something to buy stops answering, which is the trouble in the proportion of your appearances that are asks. The note works because it arrives among others that wanted nothing.

Three questions, and the first is answerable before you put this down:

1. What is the next thing you will have to announce, and who is down to hear it first? A new line, a cancellation that frees a week, a batch of something good. If everybody hears together, you have made the choice without making it.
2. How many people who have already paid you could you write to this week, and when did you last write to them? Count them rather than guessing. Men who guess guess low, and are surprised at what forty notes do.
3. When your own customers last learned something about your business, how did they learn it? From you, addressed to them, or from a sign, a post, a stranger. The answer takes ten seconds to find and is usually uncomfortable.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did only one of them finish the spring holding something worth more than the baskets?

Because both men sold twenty-four baskets, and only one sold them in an order that left anything behind. The first spent nine shillings telling two hundred households at once and ended with an empty bench and no addresses. The second spent an hour telling forty first and ended with the same empty bench, nine shillings unspent, and forty people who now know his letters arrive before the news does. The order of telling was the asset.

The verse:

One pasted up the handbills and the whole town knew together,
One wrote his forty letters and the town was told in turn.
The willow was the same willow, the price the same three and six,
But one sold out of baskets, and one sold into a habit.

Until next time. Go and write your next piece of news to twenty people who have already paid you, before anybody else hears a word of it.

P.S. The rule holds for bad news, and there it is worth more. When the price must rise, or the waiting list runs to May, your own people should hear it from you in a sentence of your own writing, not find it on your window along with everybody else. Being told first is a form of respect, and respect is not something you can afford only when the news is good.

Also in the archive: The Ones Who Went Quiet, Crossing the Square and The Farrier's Fortieth Shoe.