Many of today's most trusted sales techniques were invented over a century ago by a young merchant named Eaton in Toronto. When he was young, Eaton worked briefly with his brothers in small-town stores. In 1869, he sep up his own shop in downtown Toronto. He had many competitors, but he was also ambitious and had a plan for success. He offered a unique style of trade, but as was expected, all the other shopkeepers laughed at him, believing he would eventually fail. However, Eaton was not a man to be easily defeated; he came up with a brand new notion of business - "Goods satisfactory, or money refunded." He sold all his goods at fixed prices and only for cash.

With a sharp sense of what the public wanted, he went out of the way to meet their needs. His business grew rapidly. He set up new branches and started mail order service that allowed people to buy from a list of his goods.

Eaton's list-advertisements of his day-was the first of its kind. It was distributed and read all over the country. It was the only way to access good-quality goods at reasonable prices for people living far away from big cites. It became part of their life. They even called it The Wishing Book. The secret of the list's success was that Eaton gained the respect of this customers; they trusted him for good prices and quality goods. Probably because he remembered his miserable early days in Ireland, Eaton thought much of the welfare of his employees: better working conditions, shorter weekday hours than his competitors and Saturday afternoons off in the summer. In all this, he was a leader.