Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
VOL. L V . N o . 2.
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, July 13,1912
SINGLE COPIES L 10 CENTS.
$2.00 PER VEAR.
Selling Costs—and Business Problems
F course it costs much to sell an individual piano, but pianos are not sold like beans and butter to
i everyone several times a week, and when you attempt to solve the problem of eliminating sell-
ing costs in any products which are sold but once or twice to a single individual during a life-
time you have got to do some fine and systematic figuring.
If the warerooms in the various cities could be boiled down to one central wareroom, cutting down
the extra salesmen, advertising, leases and other expenses of every nature, pianos could be sold, of
course, much cheaper, but that is the trust idea.
Figure how we will, we will find that costs in piano selling are very hard to eliminate, and not only
is there the first cost of selling, but there are subsequent costs which must be figured in, for instruments
have to be maintained in a high state of efficiency after they have been placed out, and there is no good or
sound reason why pianos should be sold on a thin and narrow margin.
Too many merchants do not go into an analysis of selling costs, and through their own ignorance
they frequently fool themselves.
They figure that if they add what in other trades would be a fair profit to the wholesale cost of their
instruments that they are doing well—but they are not.
A tremendous selling cost must be figured in, and it amounts to a very material charge against each
piano—more than many people imagine until they have gone into the matter analytically; and in these
days when everything in business should be subjected to the closest scrutiny, there should be a more care-
ful study of selling costs—a distinct, careful and scientific analysis of the whole subject of merchandis-
ing is necessary for some men to know exactly where they stand.
In fact, ignorance of selling costs has been and is to-day a serious menace to the business future of
many a man in this industry.
For a man to sit down and say that there is no money in the business and that there are too many
merchants in the local field means that that particular person has not figured the business game cor-
rectly.
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There is money in the piano business and it is not too late for men who have not reaped the fullest
measure of success to absorb a little of the business knowledge which can be gained by a study of the
methods of men who have succeeded.
Now, I do not mean by success the flamboyant kind of success, which has been temporarily achieved
by the gold brick methods—by the guessing contest schemes and by any other plans just as reprehensible.
I mean men who have conducted business along straightforward and progressive lines—who have
gone into the subject of piano merchandising just as carefully as the great general merchants of the
country have gone into, an analysis of their own trade.
These are types of men who have succeeded and will continue to succeed, for they are true leaders.
We must take our bearings-—study and consider, and we must look as a guide to high standards of
efficiency in successful business men, and by a careful study of them, we, ourselves, may bring greater
prosperity to our own business. And the time is drawing nigh when prosperity in a national sense is to
be increased vastly. The individual merchant should profit in a corresponding ratio, and he can if he will,
but not by the "easy" route.
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