Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
7V^USIO TRKDE
ings; collect all of your dubious accounts
right now; clean out your business house
and get ready for next year's business with
clean warerooms, so to speak.
To make customers is to make money,
and it requires aggressiveness and shrewd-
ness to hold them, and the piano merchant
must get new customers to build up his trade,
and the way to get new customers is to give
correct values. Sell pianos in their -proper
class. Don't put out a hundred dollar piano
for three or four times more than it costs, be-
cause that is not fair treatment to the cus-
tomer, and sooner or later he is bound to
learn that he has bought a piano gold brick
and it will react upon your business. Keep
the quality standard well in the foreground,
and to sell pianos in their proper class should
be the watchword of every piano dealer, whe-
ther in large or small towns.
. . THE ASSASSINATION OF TRADE CREDIT.
. .
Wouldn't it jar you if you saw an article like the subjoined in one of the
financial papers ?
Would you not say that it was born in the mind of an assassin of trade credit
who sat up late at night to originate some scheme by which he could stab the
music trade industry in a vital spot ? Read it!
There are evidences already accumulating that this insane activity in piano manufacturing is
somewhat artificial. The piano houses are not endowed with a surplus of cash. They have put lots of
money into material and into manufactured goods which are not yet finished, and they have taken a
whole lot of finished goods and thrown them out in the market among the dealers, and they have rilled
the banks with notes, and some of those notes are not going to be paid, and many of them are under-
stood as not to be paid when they come due. They are really not notes in the commercial sense of the
term, because when they are given it is. understood between the dealer and the manufacturer that they
are not to be met at maturity.
Now what is going to happen?
No one,, even possessed of the most vivid imagination could credit the state-
ment that such an article was penned by a man who owned a music trade paper
and was bidding for music trade patronage; and yet, though we dislike to say it,
such is the melancholy fact. Further, it was followed up, in the same music
trade paper, by plenty more of the same sort served piping hot, with the same
rich sauce.
Wouldn't it jar y021 to know that some bank officials had received, from some source
We know of a house—and a good many
or
other,
marked copies of the paper containing this article ?
of them, for that matter—but one particular
Read it ! And read again the mass of stuff which followed, and you will not
house in a Western town that started in with
hardly a dollar behind it, but its founder had be long in figuring out the reasons behind this, which constitutes the most
a clean-cut reputation. That gave him credit. malignant stab inflicted on an industry that has ever appeared in any trade pub-
He sold good pianos at honest figures, and lication in this or the past century.
to-day he is long on the bank account, and
7he trust promoter evidently is trying a new scheme to force an industry into a
long on business results, too. He is -all trust by attacking its credit. "Filled the banks with notes" thai "it is understood
right; he is the real thing, as they say. He are not to be met at maturity."
Could any stronger tvords be used to undermine the
is a mighty good customer of some of the faith of bank men in piano paper ?
big houses, and a good payer as well.
The good nature of American piano manufacturers is proverbial, but we
We may say that he is a good advertiser, question whether they will tamely submit to this latest attack upon their honor.
for that is one of the ways bright piano mer-
It is not a question whether piano manufacturers will continue to give even
chants do their business. They needn't ad-
a weak support to a man who has not only insulted their intelligence, and whose
vertise all sort of fake sales, because regular
work will have the effect to prejudice financial institutions against the stability of
goods need not be chopped. This particular
man has a very clever way of presenting his the music trade industry. It should not end there even, for a move of this kind
statements in the columns of the daily papers, should not be permitted to pass without the most emphatic condemnation.
Attacks upon individuals are infinitesimal and in fact are the merest by-play
so that his wares are very accessible to the
as compared with this insolent assassination of the credit of the industry by one
pocketbooks of the average buyers.
While the satisfactory business of 1900 is of the papers which has long fed upon it. The whole plan was carefully
being pretty well distributed, don't fail to conceived and was developed with the idea of obtaining certain results, and the
get a goodly slice of it, for if you are not results in this case may prove a mighty sight more far-reaching than the origin-
getting it now, you can make up your minds ator anticipated.
that you never will, because it is doubtful
The trust can not be formed by ruining the credit of this industry, even if it
if general conditions will ever be made more
were possible for the trade Judas to do that.
satisfactory than at the present time.
What shall his punishment be for the offense ?
Hustle now, gentlemen, and you can sit
Shall he be permitted to hide behind dummy editors ? It is up to the piano
down and smile broadly after Jan. 1st with
a clear conscience and no troubles on your men to decide. The mask is torn off.
brain.
Piano men, as a whole, are liberal adver- every opportunity to belittle the trade press—
tisers, and it is an historical truth that the a press which, in the main, is clean and which
THE RIGHT KIND OF A LEVER.
I
T
was
Archimedes,
men who have been the most persistent pa- is working not only for the personal gain of
The value of adver
tisinj — Piano m e n
the mathematician of trons of the trade and the daily press, have the publisher, but for the advance of the in-
who are successful—
old,
who said, "Give me been most successful in their business enter- dustry it represents; because if placed upon
Phenomenal record of
theHobartM.CableCo.
—Men who patron- a lever long enough and prise, hence the statement that advertising a purely selfish basis the advance of the in-
ize the trade press.
a fulcrum on which to is a powerful factor in the development of dustry must mean the advance of trade jour-
rest it and I will raise the world." Outside modern business is a truth which should nalism.
the domain of mechanics, the advertising not be overlooked by any business man.
There are some men who question the
lever resting on a fulcrum of good value,
It is true to-day that we have some men in value of trade publications and some of them,
raises an unknown business into a proud po- this industry whose business horizon does too. who owe much to the trade press; but
sition. And advertising as a raising power is not include advertising of large proportions, you will invariably find it to be a truth that
appreciated by all firms who are endeavor- They take a narrow and prejudicial view of the men who speak slightingly or sneeringly
ing to raise their properties into the upper the use and value of trade publications, and of trade publications as a class, and who
realms of success,
there are some, too, who delight to embra.ee patronize them in a, half-hearted, way supply