Music Trade Review

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THE
MUSIC TRADE
RMFW
EDWARD LYMAN BILL, - Editor and Proprietor
J. B. SPUJLANE, Managing Editor
Executive and Reportorlal Staff:
Quo. B. KBLIJBB.
W. N. TYLER.
F. H. THOMPSON.
EMILJE FRANCES BAUER.
L. B. BOWERS. B. BRITTAIN WILSON, WM. B. WHITE. L. J. CHAMBERLIN. A. J. NICKLIN.
BOSTON OFFICE:
CHICAGO OFFICE:
E. P. VAN HARLINQEN, 195-197 Wabash Ave.
TELEPHONES : Central 414 ; Automatic 8643
PHILADELPHIA OFFICE: MINNEAPOLIS and ST. PAUL: ST. LOUIS OFFICE
ERNEST L. WAITT, 278A Tremont St.
R. W. KAUFFMAN.
A. W. SHAW
CHAS. N. VAN BUREN.
SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE: ALFRED METZGER, 425-427 Front S t
CINCINNATI. O.:
LONDON. ENGLAND:
NINA PUGH-SMITH.
69 Uaslnghall St., E. C.
W. Lionel Sturdy, Manager.
Published Every Saturday at 1 Madison Avenue, New York.
Entered al the New York Post Office as Second Class Matter.
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year; all other countries, $4.00.
ADVERTISEMENTS. $2.00 per Inch, single column, per insertion. On quarterly or
yearly contracts a special discount is allowed. Advertising Pages, $50.00; opposite
reading matter, $75.00.
REMITTANCES, in other than currency form, should be made payable to Edward
Lyman Bill.
Directory ol Piano The directory of piano manufacturing firms and corporation
on another page will be of great value, as a reference
Manufacturers found
for dealers and others.
REVIEW
S
OME of the big department stores in New York are doing an
enormous business in cheap pianos. They arc advertising these
instruments at low rates, and they are selling them in large numbers,
and it will be seen in nearly all cases sales are made so that all pay-
ments are to be made on these instruments in about three years or
less from the date of the sale.
Cannot hundreds of piano dealers in all parts of America learn
something from the action of the department store men in handling
cheap pianos, and are not a good many of them to-day actually fool-
ing themselves by continuing certain policies, simply because they
have been used for many years in the piano industry?
Should a cheap piano be sold at a price which compels the pay-
ments to run over a period of six or seven years? Will not, at the
end of the third year—when the instrument is beginning to show
hard usage—the owner figure that it will be just as well t<> permit
the piano to go back to the dealer, and buy a new one on easy terms
from some other dealer, than to continue three or three and one-
half years more in order to possess the instrument, which would be
pretty well out of commission by the time the last payment shall
have been made? In other words, what incentive is there for a man
who has purchased a cheap piano at a high price to continue to pay
five dollars a month for many years?
I
T was only the other day that a certain dealer remarked with
considerable gusto that he had sold a B
piano for $350.
The piano should have been sold at about $225, but inasmuch as he
sold this instrument for nothing down and five dollars a month, it
Exposition Honors Won by The Review
will be pretty close to six years before the last payment will have
Grand Prim
Paris Exposition, 1900 Silver Medal.Charleston Exposition, 1902
been
made on this instrument, and the question is, Will the customer
Diploma.Pan-American Exposition, 1901
Gold Medal. .St. Louis Expedition, 1904
Gold MedaZ.Lewis-Clark Exposition, 1905
ever pay the last half of the instalments?
LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE—NUMBER 1745 GRAMERCY
Are not dealers fooling themselves by charging too high a price
Cable address: " E l b U l New York."
for a cheap piano, and will not then- be a tremendous reaction, when
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 10, 1906
in the course of a few years any number of these cheap, well used-up
instruments are thrown back on their hands by people who can then
walk over to another store and get a cheap piano for $1^5 or $200,
and on the same terms which they are paying the dealer for his
EDITORIAL
$350 piano which is already fairly used up.
It is to-day a serious mistake to sell a cheap instrument at a
price which should entitle a purchaser to own a reputable, well-made
INCE about the middle of October trade in nearly every section
piano, and in the end if dealers continue to pursue this course it must
of the country has not been just what was predicted by en- react to their detriment. Selling goods out of their class is not only
thusiastic business men, but while business has not shown the ex- an injury to the purchaser, but in the end it is going to affect the
uberance which it was fondly anticipated would develop at this
dealer most seriously, for when he counts upon certain paper assets
season, it cannot be said to have been dull. Piano men, however,
he will find that they will he apt to crumble like a house of cards.
have been looking for bettered conditions in October, and many
of them were disappointed with the results the last half of the
HE cheap piano is an injury to the piano trade only when sold
month. It did not bring the average up to the point which was
out of its proper class, and it is an injury, and a serious one,
estimated that the trade barometer would reach during October,
to the dealer who sells it far out-of its class on long-time payments.
which is usually looked upon as a banner month.
Some of them, like the case to which we have referred, will chuckle
No particular reason can be assigned for this condition, unless
over the fact that they have closed a good sale by getting a hundred
it may be said that politics have had a deterring effect upon busi-
dollars more than the piano was worth, but will not that additional
ness. It is a fact that so closely interwoven are politics with
money which.they think they have made out of the customer in the
business that a while before election a business man is not perhaps
end help to drag down the sale? A man is not going to pay five
placing the same emphasis upon trade which he would if politics
dollars a month for six or seven years unless he can see a value in
did not occupy the center of the public stage in such a prominent
his purchase, and after three years a clever salesman easily explains
manner.
to him how useless it is to continue to pay these long-drawn-out pay-
S
T
A N O T H E R reason, too, that may be attributed to the falling off
i i
of trade is the fact that there has been a relaxation of energy.
One of the best posted piano men in this country recently remarked
to The Review that he was confident that because the average piano
man has done pretty fairly for the past two or three years he was
rather inclined to slow up in many ways, and the result of his lack
of energy had a devitalizing effect upon his salesmen.
One thing is certain, no good reason can be advanced beyond
a temporary one why the piano trade should not be good. It is an
absurdity to figure that the business is being overdone. It is not.
We will manufacture over a quarter of a million instruments this
year. People outside of the trade ask where all these instruments
go. Might as well ask where all the watches are going. Nearly
every man you meet has a watch, and still the watch factories were
never as busy as to-day. There are a few hundred thousand people
yet who have not been provided with pianos, and the good, hustling
dealer will secure his share of the trade. No doubt about that, and
it's constant hustling 1 , too, that will produce the business.
ments when he can get a new piano under the same conditions, and
only have to pay a total of, say, $185 for it. If the piano were sold
in its proper class and at the correct figure, the purchaser will see
that each year he is drawing very much nearer to the end, and when
he has made payments for a year or two it is, of course, a strong in-
centive to continue to pay until the end, which is being rapidly
shortened, at which time he becomes the absolute possessor of the
instrument.
Unsound business methods usually react upon any trade which
indulges in them, and misrepresentation and deceit if indulged in
by the piano dealer will in the end come back upon him with telling
force, and when he thinks that his structure is a strong one it will
crumble like a house on sand foundation.
T hand is a proof of the Everett advertisement which will ap-
_ _ pear in the magazines for December. It is unusually attrac-
tive. It is carefully studied, well balanced and is arranged so that
it will at once attract the attention of readers. But there is an
item of unusual interest incorporated in this advertisement. There
A