Selling an Idea
Telephones were a relatively new invention, having only been made public a couple of months back. And it was very expensive to own one, to say the least. Hence, only affluent families and big businesses could afford one.
And that is exactly what the Tenant Telephone Company build their entire marketing strategy around. They would only target a particular segment of the market—the upper-class people—and cater specifically toward them.
Of course, being such a big company and having no shortages of smart employees to help them in making business decisions, they had naturally learned the advantage of selling the product to the masses which would result in substantially more revenue for the telephone company.
But herein lay the problem, the raw materials required to build a telephone from scratch were simply too expensive. This forced them to only be able to sell their products to the wealthier people. After all, they couldn't cover their costs if not for them charging a high price.