Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
MEW
THE
VOL. LXVI. No. 3
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York. Jan. 19, 1918
Changing Conditions Require New Methods
I
N these times and under existing" conditions precedent has been shot to pieces as a factor in business
regulation, but it appears that quite a number of business men are apparently rather slow in realizing" the
fact. In no trade, and least of all in the piano trade, can former standards or former methods be depended
upon in taking care of current business problems.
Things are changing every day. Prices of supplies are fluctuating in an upward direction so rapidly that
only an expert calculator can hope to quote figures accurately without deep thought and investigation. Last
year's selling prices will frequently represent this year's producing costs, and unless the manufacturer is content
to find his accounts on the wrong side of the ledger he must realize that fact, and govern himself accordingly.
The long and short of it is that in making his arrangements for 1918 business the piano manufacturer
should not, and for that matter cannot, in justice to himself, be governed by conditions as they existed even as
late as December of last year. He has but to look over the quotations for 1918 on such essentials as piano
backs, plates, actions, keys and even box shooks and compare them with prices paid for the same supplies in
December, for instance, to realize that he must boost his wholesale prices and boost them quickly to break even.
There are those who declare that the business world has gone crazy; that price increasing has become an
obsession; that the mines and the mills and the supply dealers have all caught the fever, and are getting all the
golden eggs they can before the goose is slaughtered. Tt may be all very well to analyze the situation along the
lines of cause and efTect, but after all the analyzing the fact remains that the manufacturer is going to pay
more for his materials than he did last year, or he is not going to obtain them. The supply man, be it said, for
his part is going to pay more for raw materials, and can show contracts already made for 1918 to prove it.
It has been figured by one piano man, an expert on piano production figures, that higher prices quoted for
1918 on piano backs, plates, actions, keys and shooks will mean an advance of at least $7 per instrument, without
figuring, in the case of player-pianos, the 3% excise tax on player actions. In addition to this there must be
considered the added overhead which will prevail on account of restricted unit production, caused in turn
through scarcity of labor and inability to procure materials. With this added overhead taken into consideration
the total increased cost as estimated will figure up to $10 or more per instrument.
These are facts. They may not be pleasant, but they cannot be dodged either by the manufacturer or the
retailer. It means that the manufacturer must increase his prices to cover this increase and that the retailer
must be prepared not only to pay the increase of the manufacturer, but to cover it with an increased retail price,
not just enough to meet the manufacturer's charge, but enough to take care of the overhead and the tied up
capital, etc., that the increase will represent in the dealer's finances.
As has been said before in these columns, the public at the present time is educated to a doctrine of increasing
prices. Everything the average man eats or wears costs more, and in many cases has doubled or trebled in
cost. His rent is costing him more, and so is the coal to heat his house, but at the same time the average man,
particularly the skilled mechanic, is making more money right now than he ever made before in his life, and
from a person worthy of only scant consideration as a piano prospect, the average mechanic or laborer
has developed to a point where he is in a position financially to command respect as a prospect.
The manufacturer has his problems just now, and they are serious problems. The retailer also has his
problems, and they likewise are serious. It is all the more reason, therefore, for casting precedent to the winds;
for meeting current conditions with modern methods, and for doing things to-day in a manner that the situation
demands, and not in a manner that was the style ten years ago. The business man who is not watching every
national and trade move to-day and studying just how it is going to affect his business is in the same position
as the general on the battlefield who does not know at least something of what is going on on the other side of
No Man's Land. When the attack comes he will not be prepared, and the result is obvious.