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Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com
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777858
ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
THE
VOL LXV. No. 14
T
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York.
Oct. 6, 1917
8ln
*JS
$2.00 Per
Year
H E fall season is with us, and the holiday season is coming on apace, yet transportation facilities,
so far as the handling of freights is concerned, are apparently gettirig- worse instead of better. The
traffic congestion is especially pronounced in the East—that is, East of the Mississippi River—and
it is no unusual occurrence for shipments to take from one to two weeks to cover a distance of one
hundred miles on a regular line, with each subsequent shipment taking a day or two longer to reach its final
destination.
It is true that extraordinary demands have been and are being made on the railroads by the Government
—demands which are being most adequately met, but the freight situation is one that must be considered
from the standpoint of the manufacturer and the merchant, whose very existence depends on the supplying
of products to meet public demands. It takes money to conduct a war, and the less disturbance to business
the greater surety of prosperity and of profits to meet the pecuniary needs of the Government, which are
colossal these days.
As a matter of fact, the transportation problem looms up right now as one of the live questions from
a trade viewpoint. There is no doubt but that the ultimate effect will be to cut heavily into the normal
volume of business and consequently the annual volume of profits that should be realized by the retail piano
men generally.
Some there are who have heeded the warning, and by placing orders early have succeeded in stocking
up fairly well. There are others who have not shown such foresight, but all hands must look to the future
for their own protection.
The man who is short of pianos right now has something real to worry about. The man who has a fair
stock must devise ways and means for ordering sufficiently in advance to keep that stock in good shape so that
he can supply the heavy demand for musical instruments which the-coming season will bring, a demand that
is already making itself felt in every section of the country.
East of the Mississippi the piano man must take care of himself and depend upon early requisitions to keep
things going later on. In the West, however, the manufacturer can, at the expense of a little trouble, come
to the rescue of his representatives to a certain extent.
It is a known fact that the transportation problem is much less serious West of the Mississippi than
it is in the East, and while shipments are of course delayed somewhat, they still come through with a
reasonable amount of promptness.
Eastern manufacturers, with distributing facilities in Chicago, or anywhere west of the Mississippi, might
do well to start as many pianos as possible from their factories to these distributing points well in advance
of the Western demands, and thereby save from one to three weeks in delays later on.
The plan is perfectly feasible, and although it may add slightly to the cost of pianos, as a result of
storage charges, that expense will be more than offset by the sales saving and by the resulting opportunity
to make prompter shipments to Far Western and Pacific Coast points.
In these days of warfare many accepted business methods, particularly the easy going ones, must be
sidetracked in favor of more efficient and immediate means for accomplishing the same ends.
New problems require new solutions, and when the piano trade generally comes to realize this fact the
sailing will be much smoother than at present.
It is not always-possible to prevent delays, but it is possible to devise means for shortening delays or
overcoming their effects. The keeping of wholesale stocks of pianos at various central points in the West
is one of the plans that should receive serious consideration in this connection from manufacturers.