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EVENING LEDGER-PHILADELPHIA, WEDNESDAY, APBIE 7. 1916:
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SELLING HOUSES. BY MAIL
How Advertising Built A Unique and Romantic Industry
from $200 to $1,500,000
This is the business romance of a $1,500,000
industry which nine years ago did not exist.
It was built out of an idea, $200 capital and
the power of advertising. The idea was selling
a house by mail. Not a temporary or "portable"
shack, but a regular house such as you live in a
house that is a home, which represents the pride
and happiness of a family for a lifetime.
This company sells the most bulky mail order
article in existence, the largest, most important,
most critically studied purchase ever made by the
average family.
And it does this without salesmen, without
retailers, without personal touch of any kind, de
pending absolutely upon confidence, upon faith in
printed advertisements, to persuade a man and
wife to go to the bank, and draw out the savings of
a lifetime dnd send them off to an unknown firm in
a distant city.
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This industry had its beginning in the winter
of 1906-07 on top of a square piano in a little house
in Bay City, Michigan. Its first equipment was a
bread board and a ruler. With these an imaginative
young man a dreamer, if you will drew the plan
of a boathouse.
He had an idea that it would be cheaper for
people who wanted to build, to buy not merely the
lumber and materials, but lumber ready "cut ac
cording to plans, and other materials in proper
quantities, all marked and indexed like steel and
stone for a sky-scraper, eady to be shipped any
where and put together by a local contractor.
The young man his name was W. T. Sover
eign first drew the plan for a boat house. He took
it to a mill, and to dealers, and found out how much
it would cost to cut the lumber, buy the hardware
and make shipment.
His brother, Otto, also a very young man, was
in the advertising business. This brother helped
him prepare an advertisement, which in the spring
of 1907 they inserted as a half page in "Motor
Boat" magazine, at a cost of a few dollars.
It talked about boat houses, but at the bottom
was this line, placed there on a long chance, "We
also sell summer cottages."
The response to this advertisement soon
proved that people really wuld send money by
mail for such a thing. It further proved something,
of even greater importance. Nine out of ten in
quiries were for summer cottages, rather than for
a boat house.
Mr. Sovereign at once saw a field far more
vast than even he had imagined. He drew designs
for a dwelling house and some garages, and issued
a catalogue.
That year he sold eight houses of various
kinds. Inhe fall of 1908 he spent $50 advertising
in some local farm papers, and more business came.
At the end of the second year his brother Otto
gave up a good job and went to work with him at
$5 a week. A stroke of genius supplied by the new
partner was the name "Aladdin Houses" you say
what you want, rub the magic lamp of advertising,
and your house springs into being.
On April 5, 1909, the firm became national
advertisers, with a half-inch each in Collier's, the
Associated Sunday Magazines and The Saturday
Evening Post. The "campaign" cost $93; they
sent the money by post office order.
Again the advertising paid, and the following
spring larger and more frequent advertisements
were carried in several publications the largest
amount being in The Saturday Evening Post.
The advertising had to be skilful, because it
had to break down the idea that this was just
another portable house. It was not a portable
house. It was a complete house ready to build,
and permanent once it was built. Frame, siding,
clapboards, flooring, inside and outside finish, nails,
plaster, bricks, hardware, paint, varnish every
thing was supplied but the foundation.
The advertising also had to instil in the reader
confidence in the firm. People were not going to
send the savings of a lifetime cash-in-advance
unless they were convinced that they would get
their money's worth and a square deal. Every act
was carefully planned to inspire confidence. Ship
ments were made promptly. Money was refunded
without question if a customer was dissatisfied.
All possible advice and information were given to
the purchaser while the house was being erected.
The customer was always right. Plans for grading,
suggestions for landscape gardening suited to
various climates, were given free. Perhaps the most
striking feature has been the "dollar-a-knot" guar
antee which means that the customer gets a dollar
back for every knot which mars any piece of lumber
he receives.
Today that company's houses stand in every
part of the world, from Saskatchewan to the, Tahiti
Islands, in hot and cold climates. There are whole
communities built of Aladdin houses. As many as
200 homes have been sold in three months to the
same purchasers large industrial concerns which
house their own employes. In the offices 120 girls
are employed to handle the correspondence, which
has amounted to more 1;han 300,000 pieces of mail
in one month.
The company is adding other lines to its cata
logue. You can now buy from the same source not
only the house, but the plumbing, the heating, the
furniture, the interior decoration. The business is
growing tremendously. The lumber mills (some of
which it owns) are working at top speed, producing
forty houses a day, at prices ranging from $138 to
$8,000 each.
But it has not been easy. It has required cour
age, ijaith and a willingness to invest money and
wait for results.
More than half of the sales are to people
whose inquiries are a year or more old. People do
not buy houses in a hurry.
Competition has developed and has been met
with more advertising.
'For one advertisement recently a single in
sertion the firm paid $12,000.
And apropos of the advertising, Mr. Otto
Sovereign says this:
"We have never used a single advertise
ment, of any size from a half-inch up to a
two-page spread, that has not been profita
ble for us."
Perhaps a part of the answer to the whole
story is found in a quotation from Kipling that
hangs over the desk of one of the brothers the
first two lines of which are these :
"I didn't begin with askings; I took the job and
I stuck
"And I took the chances they wouldn't; an' now
they're calling it luck."
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA
The Country Gentleman
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