Quote:
Originally Posted by steve B
The jobbers mentioned in the articles would be the same sort of business I called distributors.
I would be surprised if ATC sold direct to a small store. The cost to process their bills etc would usually be more than the profits.
But this is just full of surprises, so maybe?
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The ATC and its component companies put out a lot of ads in the journals, like the below, asking to send orders to their office directly.
There don't seem to be major distributors at all, and even local distributors appear to be rather limited and often sound like they are not independent, but a part of the monopoly. This comes up in the court testimonies sometimes, where the few independent makers are battling with the problems of the ATC's might in areas outside the direct tobacco manufacturing, and cite that they are blocked from distribution. I gather the ATC did not formally own in a clean way these local distribution channels, but they function as an arm of the trust and appear to be part of it; like the relationship between Brett and American Lithography. It seems to be an internal network they are using, not outside distributors like Topps uses today.
I imagine this was probably not more profitable - but a lot of the ATC's work isn't about making direct profit but stifling competition to later make all of the profit. Allowing independent distributors would have made sales easier for their competition. I would guess this is why the system is more complicated than it needed to be, but you know what guesses are like!