Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
Advertising that Developed Big New Distribution Outlet
By C. ALFRED WAGNER, of the Musical Instrument Sales Co., New York City, and Written Especially for Printers' Ink.
The department store is a problem to most
manufacturers, the biggest many of them have.
How to get in, and get in "right"—without giv-
ing the store too deep a discount, or abandoning
the retail price to its tender mercies, or sacrificing
brand identity—these are questions of the utmost
importance to them.
I first began to realize this while traveling for
a piano house a few years ago. I heard unending
discussion of the subject by other salesmen on the
road. I absorbed the bigger, broader views of the
national distributors from the pages of Printers'
dication of the size of the market, it may be said
that the December output tends to show gross
sales amounting to half a million dollars.
These stores are all members of the United Dry
Goods Co., of which John Claflin is president, the
largest corporation of its kind in the country. The
piano manufacturers who put themselves behind
the selling plan are the largest manufacturers of
pianos and piano-players in the world.
These manufacturers approached the dry goods
merchants about two years ago and asked why
they did not enter the piano field. The latter re-
plied that they were dry goods merchants and
knew little about the piano business. When, how-
ever, they learned the opportunities open to them
in the operation of the right sort of a piano de-
partment they were half convinced. The conclu-
sive argument was found in the proposal to form
a piano-selling organization which should go into
the stores of the merchants comprising the United
Dry Goods Co., and sell the pianos for them,
using their name value to back up the advertising
and sales effort. The new company was to buy
all stock, assume all expenses, hire, handle and pay
all help, and conduct its own advertising cam-
paign. It was to bill each store as fast as it dis-
posed of its stock.
The organization at length formed to do these
things was called the Musical Instrument Sales
Co. We established headquarters in New York
and began to lay plans. We were prepared to of-
fer the public a range of pianos and player-pianos
retailing from $170 to $1,500, the product of such
houses as William Knabe & Co., Checkering &
Sons, Vose Piano Co., Kohler & Campbell, Auto-
piano Co., J. & C. Fischer, Haines Brothers and
Page Newspaper Ad Run in Six Cities Held
the Packard Co. We arranged to give the most
Sales Up to Former Bargain Day Copy.
liberal terms possible, a very small amount down
Ink. I saw that the condition ran through scores
and a smaller amount weekly; a five years' guar-
of different lines. \ was reading Printers' Ink
antee; trial privilege for 30 days; exchange within
very religiously then—I still do—and the detail
a year; free music rolls and concessions in price
of experience given there the dissection of prob-
on others; two free tunings, a piano stool and
lems, and the discussion of trends, policies and
free delivery within a certain radius.
practices by leading figures in the manufacturing
world, urged me on to an analysis of the possi-
The usual practice of progressive piano depart-
bilities in my own line. I began to ask myself
ments and stores is to have both an inside force
questions. Some department stores sell pianos.
and an outside force of salesmen, the latter gen-
Why not all? Why should pianos be "different"?
erally three or four times the size of the former.
The advertising and advertising literature are ex-
I found an answer to these questions. It is not
pected in addition to bring prospective customers
the old answer, but it may prove all the more in-
to the store to produce "leads" for outside sales-
teresting for that reason. And it is closer, more
vital to manufacturers, at least to manufacturers men to follow up. The store prospects that can-
not be closed are handed over to the outside sales-
in many lines.
rren. The latter are likewise expected to turn up
In one day last October, for instance, a large
business of their own.
department store in New York, O'Neill-Adams,
This is the classical way of handling piano busi-
sold $332,336.40 worth of goods. That is proba-
ness. Necessarily we followed it, picking for
bly the record for American stores. It is probably
managers the best and most experienced piano
second only to the world's record of the Bon
men we could find in each city and helping them
Marche, of Paris—something over $500,000 in a
form their own organization. We did not confine
single day. Of this O'Neill-Adams total, ofie de-
our search for men to the piano field, but secured
partment—pianos—sold more than $80,000 worth
men who were good salesmen, whether they ever
of instruments. That is probably a record for
saw a keyboard or not. Some of our leading
piano sales. But the point of interest to national
sales producers do not play, and most of the time
advertisers is that the department was run by an
do not have to have the instruments demonstrated.
independent sales organization representing a
The name of the maker and the sales talk are the
group of six piano manufacturers, of course with
real factors.
the co-operation of the store, and that it was only
Our first opening was in the O'Neill-Adams
the first of six such departments organized within
store, in October, 1912. For it we made use of a
the past year in as many different stores in as
selling and advertising plan that is widely known
many different cities.
as successful in the piano trade. The copy in this
Unworked, Overlooked Field.
case filled alternate pages and half pages in two
This department store had had no previous ex-
newspapers twice a week, and consisted of a long
perience in selling pianos. It would not of its own
description and appeal in reading type, with oc-
initative have started a piano department and made
casional display heads.
it the remarkable distributive outlet it has turned
The feature of each ad was the invitation to
out to be. It was a fresh, unworked, overlooked
join a co-operative piano-buying movement and
field, right in the heart of the most carefully
get a piano on a better basis than could otherwise
combed, hotly contested territory in the country.
be secured. The plan and copy have been tried out
Until within a short time before the sales com-
in many places under the direction of the man
pany was organized it had not even been con-
who originated them and have been almost in-
sidered. Now, besides the seven such markets,
two other stores have been arranged for. And to variably successful. It is a scheme, however, de-
signed only for a limited period. At the end of
these should be added eight other departments
which handle Victor talking machines. As an in- two months it runs its course and the territory
must be allowed to lie fallow for several months
so far as that scheme is concerned. But it made
bay for us while the sun shone. We advertised
generally in a number of New York newspapers,
using in all 30,000 lines during the two months.
It proved very successful, indeed, for by it we
sold more than $500,000 worth of pianos in the
first months of the new department.
Advertising Which Brought Results.
At the end of the first week the advertising
had brought in an avalanche of coupon returns,
and we had to build our outside sales force up
rapidly to thirty or forty men to take care of
them. We had ten to twelve on the floor all the
time.
After the co-operative plan had spent its force
we turned to the regulation department store bar-
gain offer, advertising twice a week special bar-
gains in pianos and player-pianos, and putting the
announcement into local newspaper pages and half
pages. 'Meantime we were planning our exten-
sions, and one after another we opened depart-
ments in these other stores, all of which are mem-
bers of the United Dry Goods Co.: Lord & Gage,
Reading, Pa.; Castner, Knott Dry Goods Co.,
Nashville; Stewart Dry Goods Co., Louisville; J.
N. Adam & Co., Buffalo, and Scruggs-Vander-
voort-Barney Dry Goods Co., St. Louis.
These departments were added not all at once,
but through the year, that in the St. Louis store
of Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney latest. Others
are in contemplation, among them the new de-
partment store of Lord & Taylor, on upper Fifth
avenue, New York, which will give one entire floor
to our department, including a concert hall.
Practically the same plan was used to start off
the departments in all except the last store—the
The Power of
Cooperation
Another Newspaper Page to Impress Idea of
Common Interest of Factory, Store and Home.
co-operative offer first and afterward the bargain
offer, with special sales on the line in the slack
months of February and March, June, July and
August.
The history of all the departments was vir-
tually the same, that of unvarying success. We
had a strong line to offer with splendid names,
at unprecedented terms. We had paid particular
attention to getting a strong organization and
treating them as well as we knew how. And we
had struck hard and often with our big-space ad-
vertising.
As the year wore on we began to get a better
line on our proposition. We strengthened the or-
ganization and established a little four-page house
organ, The Reveille, to give it a medium of com-
munication. We held simultaneous sales conven-
tions and did many other things that have con-
tributed to higher efficiency.
During all this time we were growing to feel