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THE
flUJIC TRADE
VOL. LXVI. No. 18
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York.
May 4, 1918
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Erroneous Ideas Regarding Piano Profits
S
OME extraordinary ideas prevail among the general public regarding the profits made by piano merchants
and manufacturers. And the general public evidently includes lawmakers, for it was pointed out in our
Washington correspondence last week that Representative Cary, of. Wisconsin—who has introduced a
bill in Congress which, if passed, would work a serious injury to the sales of musical instruments on
instalments in the District of Columbia—is obsessed with the idea that instalment merchants, piano dealers
included, are making exorbitant profits. He informed The Review representative that "many of them arc
getting a margin of profit from one hundred to three hundred per cent.," and he places little reliance on the
figures submitted to him by piano men regarding the average profits in the retail department of the industry
today, which are very far from agreeing with his.
The views of the Representative from Wisconsin have undoubtedly been influenced by the erroneous general
opinion that profits in piano manufacturing are enormous. The sales methods of piano dealers in the past have
also placed the retail branch of the industry under the suspicion of piling up excessive wealth. It must be
admitted that the practices of some members of the industry in years agone could not help but lead to this
viewpoint, which may be attributed in a large measure to the lack of a definite one-price policy, and a tendency
on the part of some members of the retail trade to indulge in puzzle contest and "prize" schemes of sales pro-
motion that gave the general public an idea of enormous profits and brought selling methods to a low level in
the public mind.
These sales methods, of course, were the exception rather than the rule, but the lurid advertisements in
the daily papers, and the sensational methods of publicity indulged in generally, tended to fill the public mind
with the idea that there was no stable basis for prices in the piano field, and that profits in piano sales were
like the profits we hear about when "war babies" are discussed.
Where there is a lack of uniformity in prices there is undoubtedly a lack of confidence, and it can be
naturally assumed that if a dealer asks $400 for a piano, and finally consents to take $300 for it, there is some-
thing wrong with the value of the piano, or with the man who upholds such a sales system. In other words,
this old-time, elastic system of sales was absolutely wrong, and it has taken some time to succeed in educating
the trade away from this form of salesmanship.
Representative Cary should realize that trade ethics, and trade profits to-day, are far different from those
that prevailed some years ago, and that there is a decided reaction against the practices which came in at that
time for such continuous criticism and censure from The Review.
It is unfortunate, however, that the lack of adherence to the one-price principle of doing business—the
indulgence in questionable sales methods in the past—should blind the critics to the fact that the music trade
industry to-day is, we are glad to say, making strong and steady strides along the right road in the retail sales
domain.
Price cutting in every line to-day is becoming decidedly unpopular. Enterprises in which the most clastic
conditions prevailed a few years ago are now becoming more and more rigid in insisting upon the maintenance
of one price and shorter terms in time sales. This is due not only to a general sentiment among business men
that price cutting is not "good business," but it also may be attributed to public opinion, which is supicious of
stores wherever undue elasticity of price exists.
Houses in the music trade industry which have been identified in the past with the one-price policy have
made it pay; moreover, they have the confidence of the community in which they do business, while those
houses that have held to the old elastic price system and sensational price-cutter's methods of publicity have
lost ground.