Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
VOL. LXVI. No. 22
JH1
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York. June 1, 1918
8in
*KM°p« Y ^
Retail Prices Must
W
HAT is the individual piano merchant doing these days to educate the Imying public to expect to
pay more for pianos? What plans lias he put or is he putting in force actually to get more
money for the pianos that he sells—not just a couple of dollars more per instrument to cover
actual excess charges assessed upon him by the manufacturer or transportation company—but a
sufficient increase to cover the added value of the piano to him as a business asset? These are mighty big
questions to-day—questions, it would seem off-hand, that are not getting the serious attention which they
should from many of our piano merchants, in view of the fact that they are paying and must pay the manu-
facturer more for the instruments they handle.
A piano or player-piano under present conditions has ceased to be a dollars and cents proposition. It
cannot be handled on the basis that it costs so much to put it into the warerooms; that the overhead is
normally so much, and the interest on the investment is so much more, a share of which the individual in-
strument must carry.
The value of the piano to-day is not what it costs, but what it is worth to the retailer in the position that
he happens to find himself. In other words, a piano in New York, frankly speaking, is not worth as much
as a piano, say, for instance, in Harrisburg, Pa., for when the New York merchant sells his instrument he has
a chance of replacing it in a few hours from the factory and by motor truck, while the man several hundred
miles away from the manufacturing center must depend upon railroad transportation and may wait anywhere
from several weeks to several months to have a shipment come through from the factory. The fact that he
may be in a hurry for instruments doesn't count.
While the out-of-town man is waiting for his stock to reach him, his overhead, his rent, lighting bills,
taxes, living expenses and salesmen's salaries all go on steadily. He must see to it that these are covered by
the income from the pianos that he can get to sell.
These are not normal times, and therefore current business cannot be figured on a normal basis. The
average man is not going to enjoy the same turnover this year that he has in previous years, for war condi-
tions will prevent it. No matter how hard he works, or how he advertises, his business is going to be limited
by the number of pianos he can get, and if he only gets 50 per cent, of his regular allotment, the profits on
that 50 per cent, will have to carry the overhead and leave a margin formerly taken care of by the 100 per
cent, turnover.
That means that 50 per cent, of stock will have to be sold at prices that will really insure a profit, and,
for the safety of the business, those prices must represent cash, or terms mighty close to cash. The retailer
who values his pianos too lightly, even when sold on a cash basis, is in the danger zone, but he who values his
pianos too lightly and then sells them on the long terms that prevail in normal years, is simply digging a grave
for his business, and digging it mighty fast.
Leading men in all branches of the trade, both manufacturers and merchants alike, have been preaching
the gospel of proper prices and cash sales, and the individual piano man must see the light if he is going to
stay in business. He cannot afford to follow a careless competitor, for the more business the low-price, long-
term competitor does just now 7 the more likely he is to leave the field entirely to the other, the careful, man in
the near future.
The individual man must figure his business according to his own situation. From present conditions it
is not far wrong to say that in the retail trade it is fast becoming a question of each man for himself and
the devil take the hindmost. No amount of association work or co-operation is going to help the dealer who
cannot in the first place protect his own interests by observing what may be considered as elemental rules for
good business practice.