Vacation With Pay

Almost the only wholesaler who boomed a really hearty welcome to the members of the N.R.D.G.A. last week (see above) was stocky, suntanned Milton Reynolds, who flew in from Mexico. The reason Reynolds exuded smiles and cheer was that he had something unique to sell. He told amazed retailers that he could deliver Mexican-made, sterling silver cigaret lighters at the rate of 20,000 a month. The price: $6 each, including U.S. customs duty.

Reynolds got into the Mexican trade when he took a vacation last August, after 14 successful years in Chicago, manufacturing printing presses. He rented a comfortable house from the swank Mexico City Country Club, planned a lazy year. The plan for rest went the American way after a few weeks: he met a Mexican businessman whose small factory was producing 50 lighters a day.

Vacationer Reynolds took a look, quickly reckoned that he could sell 50,000 such gadgets to his U.S. department-store friends. He chucked his vacation plans and made a deal: Reynolds would help the Mexican streamline his production, take exclusive distribution rights in exchange. While he was at it he also got another Mexican businessman to go into the mass production of a silver-plated zinc alloy safety razor to wholesale in the U.S. for 52-c-; apiece. Reynolds guessed that he could sell several hundred thousand of them in the razor-short U.S.

By last week Milton Reynolds discovered that he had underestimated the goods-hungry U.S. market for both products. To fill the orders stuffed into his bulging brief case he will have to step up production of lighters to 45,000 a month, of razors to a million. As he started back to Mexico, Reynolds sadly admitted that these production goals may be too high. Mexico has innumerable national and local holidays a year, and for days after each celebration absenteeism among the fiesta-loving workers runs high.

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