As most of you know, TIME Inc. is accustomed to making all kinds of surveys as an adjunct to our business. Last week one of these surveys was the occasion for a pair of simultaneous luncheon meetings on both sides of the Atlantic. I was a guest at the luncheon here in Manhattan, given by the British Empire Chamber of Commerce. C. D. Jackson, managing director of TIME-LIFE International, was present at the other, which was given in London by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain.

The survey in question originated a year ago as a by-product of a trip that TIME'S advertising director, Harry Phillips, made to England (A Letter From the Publisher, May 19, 1947). He went there to examine postwar business conditions and to talk to exporters about advertising in TIME Inc.'s overseas editions. He found, to everyone's astonishment, that in all the decades of trading between Britain and the U.S., no real effort had been made by either country to discover the requirements and attitudes of American retail stores toward British goods. In other words, the British consumer goods industry had never really met the American market face to face.

This discovery coincided with TIME Inc.'s own enlarged interest in world trade. TIME-LIFE International, which publishes our overseas editions, is founded on the belief that the exchange of news and goods between America and the rest of the world is for the benefit of all concerned. Its overseas editions carry advertising sold separately from TIME Inc.'s domestic editions, and there are at present more than 462 world traders advertising in them.

Therefore, for our own curiosity and interest, as well as Britain's, we decided to find out what American retailers thought about British goods and the present and potential market for them in the U.S. After getting suggestions from some 200 British manufacturers as to what questions should be asked, we designed a questionnaire to cover ten of the most important categories of British consumer exports to the U.S.: woolens, silverware & cutlery, men's shoes, china & glassware, linens, bicycles & sporting goods, men's furnishings, knitwear, perambulators & toys, leather goods.

To get the answers to this questionnaire, we retained The Merchandising Group, an organization with wide experience in U.S. merchandising surveys. Their interviewers talked to executives, buyers and department heads in 103 retail stores in 48 U.S. cities regarding their present policies and future plans for British merchandise. They were also asked how they thought the British could best increase their sales from now on.

The results were released last week in a 75-page booklet, The Market for United Kingdom Consumer Goods in the United States.

Interestingly enough, the majority of U.S. retailers interviewed say they could sell more British goods (especially those requiring fine workmanship) in all of the above ten categories if they could get them, and that increased shipments of these goods, because of their high quality aspect, would not conflict with the sale of U.S. made products.

This survey, of course, is not the answer to Britain's dollar problem or the final word on the U.S. market for all its goods. It is not concerned with the millions of bushels of wheat and the tons of steel and coal that are negotiated for by government agreement. It is concerned with consumer goods only and the multiplicity of small transactions between private businessmen which, in the aggregate, adds up to a respectable sum. Of the TIME Inc. study, Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, says:

"There can be no hope of success, in our present economic regime, unless manufacturers themselves, individually or in groups, study their market and develop effective sales policies based upon real knowledge of their customers' wishes and ideas. It is that knowledge which this volume seeks to supply."

Cordially,

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