There are many kinds of businesses. One of the commonest is the trading business, where goods are bought and sold. The object is to sell at price that covers not only the original purchase cost of the goods, but also the expense of handling them and a fair margin besides.

Retail Trading Business

The retail store is a good illustration of the activities of a trading business, whether the store is a neighborhood grocery, a unit in a big chain store system, or small, perform the same business activities that are concerned with buying and selling. Some retail store specialize in one type of goods, such as groceries, or drugs, clothing, or jewelry. Other retail stores, in which a customer may buy any or all of the above items.

Wholesale Trading Business

The establishments from which the retail stores buy their goods are also business concerns engaged in buying and selling. They may be wholesalers or distributors, as they are sometimes termed. A wholesaler, according to the legal definition is buying and maintaining at his place of business a stock of the lines of merchandise that he distributes and sells to retailers or to institutional, commercial, or industrial users, but does not sell in significant amounts to ultimate individual consumers.

Manufacturing Business

The retail merchant also may buy direct from manufacturers. The dress manufacturer, from whom the retail merchant buy his stock, has to buy cloth, thread, trimmings, buttons. He has sewing machines operated by men and women who make the dresses. He has salesman who take samples to the retail stores and bring back orders for dresses to be made up and delivered to the stores.

Service Business

There are companies that do not buy and sell merchandise of manufacture things. Their business is rendering a service. Example, telephone and telegraph companies, railroads and express companies, and taxicab companies. These companies have special facilities for rendering their services, such a wires, poles, conduits, and apparatus. They have to buy equipment, materials, supplies, they have salesmen to sell their services. The object of these companies is to render a good service at a price that will leave them a fair margin after paying expenses.