Store Sets; D. Montague

The business is intensely competitive. I have watched pot-bellied men in their forties get into a fist fight over whose brand should get the better side of the shelf. I've seen a thick-skinned, Army-brat mother of teen agers in tears over a single facing in an insignificant store. The frustration casual ties are hard to count, but I know of four heart-attack victims in the past year. Often I work all day only to have a competitor come behind me the next day and reset everything to his advantage. The arena for our contention is the store set, wherein the various sales reps and merchandisers descend on a store to clean it, pull discontinued items, work in new items, and allocate the shelf space. The question of how best to set a category is complicated by several factors-visibil ity, traffic flow, and so on-but a major consideration is to make the set tamper proof. This means I want to separate any standard-shaped packages from an expan sion-minded competitor by putting a pack age of another shape between us. I want to set my stuff horizontally, in most cases, so it's harder for the other guy to rob me. Most important, I want to be fair. It isn't that I have a generous nature. I want to be fair because I don't want to give my competitor an opening to challenge my set.

I have brands in five categories. If I beat the competition to the store, my first task is The author, who has used a pen name, wishes to remain anonymous. to decide which category is the most critical. I try to anticipate which of my competitors may show up, and where their priorities will lie. I make contingency plans in case I guess wrong. I grab the category where I have the most to gain or lose. At any given set I may have two major competitors and three or four minor com petitors. If the competition sends a green horn, I'll end up calling all the shots, and he'll end up stocking the shelf. A standard question among competitors who meet as strangers at a set is, "So how long you been with Procter?" Or: "How long have you been with Kimberly?" But the question is asked as a formality, or to confirm the original impression, because it is immedi ately apparent how long everybody's been around. A veteran paired with a newcomer will always take over the set within a matter of seconds, even without conscious contriv ance. The dynamics of cooperation and challenge are subtle, and it takes a while to learn to work the machinery. If the new comer sticks around for six months, he'll be trouble. He'll consult higher authority to settle minor disputes. He'll fight over trivi alities. He's sure he's being taken advantage of; he just doesn't know how. After a year he'll start to get the hang of things. He'll start picking up your stratagems. One morn ing you'll arrive at an eight-o'clock set at quarter past seven and find him already at work. You'll know then that you have a worthy antagonist.

Despite the cutthroat nature of the busi ness, old competitors work well together. They have learned that it's better to work 272 273 "Competition is nothing but freedom looked at upside down. In a market where buyers are free to shop around, sellers must outdo each other to get and keep customers. Through competition there is produced the maximum of goods and services that the public wants most." -Hart Buck things out between themselves rather than bring in the set supervisor, who may, in irritation, cast a decision to the detriment of both. I often eat lunch with my fiercest competitors, who have bitterly cursed me to my face and vice-versa, and from whom I've had much more training than from my own company. It is a relationship similar to an old contentious marriage, where each part ner anticipates the other's argument. The fighting tends to be fast and efficient. Ninety percent of the time we are civil, even friendly, and we generally enjoy each oth er's company. But we're all ready to play hardball at a moment's notice.

Seen as a game, the store set is a combi nation of the German card game skat and football. It is like skat because the config uration of allies and enemies is constantly in flux. It is physically demanding because the set starts at seven or eight a.m. and may be more than a hundred miles away. I've left home as early as four-thirty to get to a distant set ahead of competition who lived in that town. The average set takes eight or ten hours, including drive time, but fourteen isn't uncommon. The work is usually light, but at its worst it is grueling and endless. I've had easier days roofing houses. My accounts are all independents and small chains. There was a time when I could have opted for a more staid job working big chain accounts where decisions are made at a regional level and sections are set by schematic diagrams called planograms. I chose the independents because chaos of fers security: I can't be replaced by a robot.

The people I work with feel the same way. Better to fight for a living, and to have opportunities for improvisation, than to be at the mercy of paper-pushers. There is no altruism among us. Regardless of how well disposed we may feel toward one another, there is no charity on the set, only expedient courtesies and temporary alliances. The only reason I don't take the whole shelf for myself is I can't get away with it, and I know if I tried I would lose my credibility with the store owner or set su pervisor. My competitors are of the same make, and I expect no different. We have no common cause. And yet, in our aggregate, it is sharks like us, along with commercial real estate spec ulators, futures dealers, and other such quasi-parlOUStypes, who ensure that when you go grocery shopping you don't have to drive forty miles to stand in line for hours to buy whatever happens to be on the shelf at an unpredictable price. We are the ones who keep the junk off the shelf, and make sure the best products are in stock. To apothe osize the job to a metaphysical level, we are paid for our recognition of the value of time and space. In those parts of the world where we do not exist, you will find starvation. It is the drive for market share, the drive to maintain and increase shelf space, that is the impetus for continual improvement of the product. D THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY PART OF THE ECONOMY by Bill Chaitow H ardly anyone knew his name. Each day, the old man would make his way to the same spot downtown in front of Kress' department store with his aging dog. He would unfold his metal chair, sit down and begin to finger the keys and buttons on his ragged, worn accordion. The tunes were hardly recognizable and they were not played with zest. Often he would sing but his words were mouthed so low and indistinctly that passersby were barely able to recognize the song. Still, enough of them would feed coins into the upturned hat, which sat less than ten inches from the nose of his tired dog, that the performer returned to his "stage" five days a week for many years.