Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
MUJIC TRADE
VOL.
LXI. N o . 17 Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Av« M New York, Oct. 23, 1915 SING }'foo c PER
YEAR CENTS
Personality—A Virile
T
^HERE are some men who are successfully conducting business enterprises who endeavor to
secrete their own personality from public view as much as possible. They seem to feel that it
shows a kind of vanity on their part to parade their own accomplishments and their own person-
ality even in an unobtrusive manner.
Is this secretive or unobtrusive plan a good one?
Personality is a force which few appreciate and few understand.
Take a small business which has been built entirely through the personality of the founder. Its
problems become more complex as the business grows, and soon the proprietor finds that it is a
physical impossibility to give the personal attention to customers and to details which he did when the
enterprise was smaller.
He finds that he cannot handle the small matters himself; and, yet, it was his personality that has
made the business.
How can that be perpetuated?
Should he not be to the forefront as much as possible?
That is a question which faces many business men. How that mystic something called personality
can be transmitted to the greater and more complex organization!
In brief, what new elements must be added to the business and what undesirable features must
be eliminated in order to take care of the onward growth of the business so that people will still
patronize it?
John Wanamaker keeps his personality well to the front even to signed advertising editorials.
The vast business which he directs is nothing more nor less than a reflection of his personality.
It seems to me that when small enterprises grow into large ones the personality problem
analyzed means nothing more nor less than that all of the men who are occupying positions of respon-
sibility must feel the spirit of the house—its objects, its aims and its policies.
They must perpetuate the personality which is reflected from the founder in the business manage-
ment of the house. Then that personality, which some term good will, radiates in ever-widening
circles.
If the men who represent a house constantly strive to keep the business personality before their
trade, unquestionably it will all have its effect.
A business which is purely local is easier to manage in a personality sense than one whose ramifi-
cations embrace the entire continent.
One is a local problem and the other national, and, yet, the same principles and policies should
apply to the upbuilding of the interests in both cases. Boiled down, personality means a policy of
agreeable, courteous and responsive treatment of all patrons. It means methods and policies which
insure a value equivalent in every transaction. It means that the spirit of the house is to give every
patron an agreeable recollection of all business transactions with it.
The house which insists upon unfailing courtesy, upon a pleasant reception of its customers,
unquestionably impresses upon their minds a desire to call again—a desire to have closer intimacy,
which means a larger business.
I affirm that a man to be successful in any business establishment must be in sympathy with the
policies of the house. If they are good and he is bad they cannot serve long together. If he is good
(Continued on page 5.)