BOUGHT BY JONES
TAKE OVER MAIL ORDER BUSINESS
OF KEMPER-PAXTON.
TWO BUSINESSES SEPARATE.
THE CAPITAL STOCK INCREASED
TO $300,000.
Plans Contemplate One of the Largest
Mail Order Concerns in Amer-
ica -- Establish Buying
Stations All Over
the World.
The Jones Dry Goods Company had purchased the mail order business of Kemper-Paxton Mercantile Company, increasing the capital stock of the former company form $150,000 to $300,000. W. T. Kemper retains part of the preferred stock in the company.
In the evolution of the commercial world within recent years the buying of goods by mail from catalogue houses by the people of all sections of the country has grown to such proportions, so states one of the Jones brothers, and has proved such a satisfactory way to trade that it must be recognized as an advanced step in the retail distribution of merchandise. In view of the fact that the people are buying largely from mail order houses, it was decided by the Jones company that it would be better to keep this trade in Kansas City than to have it go to the markets further east. Some of the fundamental principles on which the Jones Bros. will conduct the new branch of their business are stated as follows:
Their purpose shall be to get the goods from the maker to the user at the smallest expenditure of time and money. "The greatest good to the greatest number," is to be the motto of the new department. The present quarters of the Kemper-Paxton company, which will be occupied by the new firm, consist of a seven-story and basement building at Ninth and Liberty streets. As it becomes necessary these quarters will be enlarged.
The new business will be run distinctly separate from the business at Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Main and Walnut streets, but the two will operate in the closest harmony and out-of-town customers will be accommodated at either store.
The Jones Bros. are planning to make of the new business one of the greatest mail order concerns in the United States. Buying stations have already been established all over the world, and merchandise will be shipped direct to Kansas City from those places.
"Our trade territory for the present will be the great Southwest," said J. L. Jones, yesterday. "But as rapidly as is deemed expedient the whole United States will become our market. There is no reason why this catalogue business should not reach from Maine to California and from Winnepeg to Galveston in the course of a few years.
"It is believed that with the re-establishment of navigation on the Missouri river a certain and tremendous increase in the output of Kansas City factories will result, because of the outlet furnished by this distributing agency and others of its kind, and because of better freight rates resulting from river navigation."
Both of the Jones brothers have been country merchants in past years and have felt the country merchants' antagonism toward the mail order houses. They state, however, that so long as millions of people are buying goods from catalogue, there is no reason why Kansas City should not get in the fight and keep the business that rightfully belongs to her. For this reason the Kemper-Paxton Mercantile Company launched its mail order business in Kansas City and for the same reason the Jones Bros. have absorbed it with the determination to make it one of the greatest institutions of its kind in the United States.
