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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The European Struggle and Its Effect Upon the Fortunes of the American
Music Trade—The Opportunity for the Player-Piano Manufacturers—
Public Will Continue to Buy—Intelligent Co-operation Necessary.
The great upheaval which has now widened into
inter-continental war will not be without its effect
upon the fortunes of the music trades in the United
States. There will be disturbances. The natural
course of business will be altered. Things will not
run just as they have been accustomed to run.
It is up to the manufacturers and dealers to ad-
just themselves and their ideas to a new order; to
turn an apparent disadvantage into a sure ad-
vantage.
This is not mere talk; it is not platitudinous
conversation. It is good solid fact. Listen to some
concrete truths:
The past year has been in many ways what the
world calls a bad year. Business has been in a
state of what is termed depression. Staple indus-
tries have been slow; industries of luxury have
been slower.
Vet we know that in the Middle West anyhow
the player trade has kept up so remarkably well
that manufacturers and dealers alike have realized
for the tirst time, some of them, the enormous
pulling power of the player as an article appealing
to the present desires of the people.
There is no excuse in the world for supposing
that the public are going to stop buying players.
There is not the slightest reason for holding back
on orders. Of course, if dealers make up their
minds that nobody is going to buy players, and
thereupon cease any effort to sell them, it will natu-
rally follow that nobody will buy, and business
will promptly be declared bad. But this is all non-
sense, and should not occupy the thoughts of any
sensible man for a moment.
In point of fact the events of the past summer
prove beyond a doubt that the player proposition
is the healthiest proposition that the piano trade
has ever known ; a proposition that has survived
in spite of stupidity and neglect, and that is only
waiting for intelligent handling to be the one big
boom of the day.
It is up to the trade to consider these facts and
to know that it will take much more than a Euro-
pean war to kill the player trade.
But to get anywhere in anything means common
sense, co-operation between necessary elements and
an intelligent understanding of what the proposi-
tion really is.
The first big requirement is immediate co-opera-
tion between manufacturer and dealer for the com-
mon purpose of educating the public to a better
understanding than they now have of what the
player really is and really does.
We have urged this many, many times. We have
argued without ceasing the simple fact that the
public are ready for the player whenever the player
trade is ready for them, but that if the efforts of
player salesmen are to be confined to looking for
easy things to sell and easy ways of selling them.
the player trade this winter will not come up to
expectations; not by a long shot.
Again we say that this is nof mere talk. It is
solemn truth. The biggest opportunity the piano
trade has ever had or ever is likely to have is
being deliberately thrown away, simply because the
rank and file of the dealers and the majority of
the salesmen are looking for an easy thing to sell
and care nothing for the future of their business
or for their future prosperity.
The remedy for this deplorable state of affairs
is for the manufacturers of player actions and of
player-pianos to undertake a campaign of educa-
tion among the dealers and salesmen, not merely
by having traveling salesmen call on the retailers
to sell them goods, nor even by merely having
mechanics call upon dealers from time to time to
fix up defects, but by keeping in close touch,
through special missionaries, with the methods of
selling, the methods of demonstration, the manner
in which the tuners handle players, the kind of
advertising being done; and, in fact, all the details
of the player retail trade. It should be the duty
of such missionaries to advise, to assist and to give
their services in every possible way to the pro-
motion of the desirable end of creating among the
public once more that natural desire for the player
which has been almost entirely crushed out by
cheap advertising, by cheap terms, by cheap selling
methods.
The second big requirement is for the trade to
realize that the public which buys think of the
player just exactly what the sellers themselves
think of it.
This, again, is no nonsense, no cloudy philosophy;
it is demonstrated fact. Every big sales manager
has found out this truth; every big advertising
man knows it. To create a due respect for the
player among the intelligent classes of the com-
munity is one of the immediate tasks before the
trade. But to accomplish it we must first learn to
respect the player ourselves. That is mere com-
mon sense.
Our dealers, our salesmen, our tuners, must all
begin now to learn to understand the player as a
mechanism and as a musical instrument. Mark
this: nobody who really understands the player
has any feeling for it but one of admiration and
respect. So far, however, as ignorance and indif-
ference reign, so far will the player be misunder-
stood. Wherever you find a dealer knocking the
player, or sneering at it, be sure that he does not
at all understand it.
The third big requirement is that player action
manufacturers should insist upon the piano makers
who use their mechanisms giving due attention to
installing them correctly.
Unseen, but by no means negligible, is this enemy
of the trade. Bad installation, with its ill-timed
motor actions, its bad regulation of expression de-
vices, its faulty touch and its innumerable small
defects, is the cause of more annoyance to the tuner
and to the owner than perhaps any other single
element. It is a secret cause of trouble, which an-
nually is responsible for direct loss to the makers
and to the sellers. It is to the interest of all to
think of this matter. And this applies as much to
the piano makers who turn out their own player
(Continued on page 10.)
Fall 1914
Yes it is just about upon us, MR. DEALER,
we mean you who have not been lined up
as yet by sending us a piano for a sample
installation of the
Sialer Piano Player
snos tne Jia/nan 9oucn
v^ Put it J ^ [ ^ u f Piano
so that you will have it for your early Fall
trade.
Dealers all over the United States are find-
ing this to be the solution to the trade-in
proposition.
Write us immediately for prices and further
information.
MANUFACTURED BY
SIGLER PIANO PLAYER CO.,
Offices and Salesrooms
Sigler Building, 30 N. Second St.
HARRISBURG
Factory
426-428 Market St.