Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
HE courageous and candid action of certain prominent piano
T manufacturers
in announcing a raise of prices to wholesale
and retail trade should find a ready echo in the breasts of every
thoughtful piano man, not least among those who are more
especially interested in players. We may suppose that no one
will fail to agree, theoretically, with the statement that the
trade has tried and found wanting the whole scheme of cheap
prices for cheap quality. Considering that everybody one meets
nowadays joins in saying that there is nothing in the cheap
piano, the cheap player or the cheap music roll, the innocent
bystander may well wonder why the gap between theory and
practice is so wide, why, in fact, there is so much promise and
so little performance. The answer, of course, is to be found in
the simple fact that until a very short time ago the cry was
everywhere for the very cheapest player that could be made.
The retailers had found that to sell a good player at a good price
is a matter of salesmanship, of using skill and having the patience
to plan, not to mention tying up capital and having a smaller
number of sales. The fact that the high quality business is the
real profit maker and that cheap trade at cheap prices on long
time is no good to anybody but money-lenders does not appeal at
once to the man who figures he is making good on selling to
the masses; but the piano trade has had an experience during
the past three or four years which must convince everyone
sooner or later, as it has already convinced the wise ones, that
small profits and quick returns form the soundest basis of retail
business to-day, as ever.
may be pardoned for believing that if the truth could be
O NE known,
the reasons for the admitted failure of the player-
piano to reach its true status among the public, might be traced
to a parallel failure in understanding that to sell players is a
matter of salesmanship, of real skill. In the early days of the
industry, the selling of players was highly developed by a few
concerns, who mostly did both manufacturing and retailing
themselves. Fifteen years ago the exploitation of the high-grade
players was proceeding apace, with generally gratifying results,
in the hands of specialist player salesmen, high-grade advertising,
recitals and a general attitude towards the player of genuine
respect. It was only when the cream of this trade had been
skimmed and when the first stratum of music-loving people had
been uncovered and worked, that the real task was exhibited in
all its complexity. For the cheap player, speaking relatively,
had begun to appear and it was at once evident that this instru-
ment would not sell to the general unmusical public on aught
but its price. From the recognition of this fact flowed all the
evil consequences of later years, the gradual cutting of prices
down to the impossible, the extinction of profits, the abandon-
ment of constructive advertising. And along with it all has gone
a progressive deterioration of the player-piano in the opinion of
intelligent people. It is time to wake up and put some brains
into salesmanship again.
HE disappearance of the very cheap roll is not to be
T
regretted. The only elementary cardinal principle of busi-
ness, one supposes, should be that commerce is the exchange of
goods on so fair a basis that both parties thereto make a profit;
one gaining the thing desired at a satisfactory price and the
other selling a good thing at a fair profit. The idea that one of
the two parties must get stung every time a piece of goods is
sold is a fool idea that has too long held the consciences of men
in its bonds. Yet just this foolishness is at the root of the mania
for selling things below cost, which has done so much harm to
the piano business during the past two decades. At its most it
has been the desire to put across one bad piece of business in
order to help along one not so bad. At its best it has been the
belief that an enormous output might in time overcome initial
loss on each piece sold. In all cases it has been in every sense
of the term useless and absurd. Two wrongs do not make a
right, and no sane man in the piano industry will say that the
policy has enriched anybody or done any good to the trade.
Is it not time we all made a legitimate profit on our sales?
HE decline of the player recital as a factor in sales cam-
T
paigns constitutes a real deterioration in method. The
recital was the first successful demonstration idea evolved in
the progress of the player-piano. It was for a time supremely
successful. It failed only when, the easiest trade having been
secured, the real nature of the task became apparent and it
was seen that real playing of real music on a plan of invitation
adapted to secure real interest, was necessary to obtain results.
Right there the hollowness of much pretence became seen of
all men. The thing was too difficult, it was too far removed
from ordinary methods of salesmanship, it demanded too much
knowledge, too good a manner, too much tact, courtesy and
intelligence. The art of conducting a recital so as to interest
intelligent people without pestering them with requests for their
names and addresses, or without trying to sell the players right
on the recital floor, is an art, which unhappily appears to be
known to few and to be almost totally disregarded. Yet there is
positively no method yet discovered, or likely to be discovered,
of bringing the player-piano to the notice of people with money
and intelligence, comparable with the recital properly conducted.
Let us ask one pertinent question: If the system is wrong, why
has it never been abandoned by the one player house which,
above all others, is a model in method and in results?
Quality Goods and Low Cost
•—Make a combination that is hard for the bench
manufacturer to attain BUT—
ATTENTION !
Piano manufacturers who have
a close working agreement with
us enjoy the ability to secure high
grade benches that really match in
color, finish and design. Think
of the advantages!
We Have It Here in Style 110!
Duet bench with music compartment, round fluted
columns. 5-ply veneer top, 37 x 5 ins. Bottom of
compartment 3-ply veneer birds-eye maple. Height
20J/2 ins. Hand rubbed and polished all over.
Get our complete new catalog
Made in figured mahogany, selected burl
walnut, ebony and oak
9
STANDARD PIANO BENCH MFG. CO.
1223 W. Lake Street, CHICAGO