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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
FEBKIWRY 23, 1918
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Both Manufacturers and Retailers Agree That Present Conditions Are Most
Favorable for the Trade As a Whole to Concentrate Its Energies in the Work
of Producing, Popularizing and Selling Player-Pianos of the Highest Type
liit l>y bit the nation settles down to war. The
first days of surprise, of excitement, of bewil-
derment, are passed. We are coming to face
the realities of the situation and to get around,
slowly hut surely, to an understanding that
radical changes in business and social life, com-
parable only with those which have been
brought about in the other belligerent nations,
are at hand. Great events are impending; great
external events. Equally great events impend
internally.
The national life is being modified in multi-
tudinous ways, but nowhere unhealthily. Modi-
fication, however, is not necessarily either pain-
ful or harmful. It is, however, sometimes alarm-
ing to those who do not think as clearly as
they might, just as all change is alarming to
the ignorant, even the most salutary change.
Let us have no fear, however. We must face
new conditions, it is true; but, so far as concerns
our own industry, it is certain that new condi-
tions can only operate to our direct advantage
if we do as we ought to do.
The One Side
Consider the situation as it exists. On the
one hand you'have a nation stirred to its depths
by military activity. You have men withdrawn
from civil industry and placed in the fighting
ranks at the front, or in the great supply armies
in the factories and shipyards behind the front.
You have therefore high wages and tremendous
activity. You have all the conditions, in short,
that produce extensive and intensive demand for
every sort of manufactured product that pro-
motes comfort and civilization. You have a de-
mand for every conceivable sort of luxury.
Pianos and player-pianos are not luxuries in the
right sense of that term; but they are marks
of a high state of cultivated demand; and there
is always, in times like these, an intensified de-
mand for them. So far, then, we have naught
to look for save good business.
The Other Side
But there is another side to the picture. With
all the great prospects for retail activity, we
find ourselves faced with shortage of labor and
shortage of supplies. In no less serious a man-
ner we must face a probable shortage of rail-
road facilities for the movement of our goods.
What then is our natural play in a game like
this?
The answer niay be put in a single sentence.
11 runs thuswise:
Let wholesale and retail effort alike be con-
centrated on the production and sale of only the
best goods!
Simple, nay obvious, as this answer is, when
once one takes the trouble to analyze it, a few
words of further explanation will not be out of
place.
the problems of meeting a large demand under
manufacturing and shipping conditions that are
extremely difficult will be carefully discussed.
But even before then it would be highly ad-
vantageous to set forth the possible bases of a
trade policy.
Now the reasons for concentrating on higher-
priced player-pianos may be stated, almost in
the very words of a prominent Western whole-
sale man. They are as follows:
It is costing to-day much more to make any
kind of piano or player-piano than it cost even
twelve months ago. The probability of further
cost increases is very considerable.
Already
the piano of that kind which a few years since
was called the thump-box has become quite un-
profitable. Therefore that type of piano has
virtually disappeared.
Now, considering that
the present-day tendency in pianos is directly to-
wards the player, and considering also that
there is more money within the same shipping
bulk, as one might say, compressed within the
case of a player-piano than in that of a straight
piano—more money for both maker and seller—
it does not take much thought to see that play-
er-pianos ought to get more of our attention
and straight pianos less.
In the tirst place, regarding this proposition,
you only have to look at the cost of manufac-
ture and the difficulties of getting supplies to
see that the investment in each straight piano
is so much greater than it ever was previously
as to make straight uprights virtually unprofit-
able, in all save the most expensive grades.
This being the case, and considering likewise
the great difficulty of getting goods shipped, it
is plain that the only wisdom is to put as many
eggs as we can into each basket; which means,
to make and sell the higher-class and more
profitable goods. These unquestionably are
player-pianos.
As for the question of whether such goods
can be sold in quantities sufficient to provide
an outlet for the quantity that could be manu-
factured if this advice were taken, The Re-
view's informant was certain that there would be
no difficulty on this score. He pointed out that
public feeling is favorable towards the player-
piano anyway, and also that the probabilities
are that the number of such instruments pro-
duced this year will necessarily not exceed the
figures for 1917 and may fall short of them. But
this, he thought, would not be a calamity, espe-
cially if the wise tendency now working out
among manufacturers to stiffen terms to the re-
tail trade should drive the latter to handling
the ultimate consumer more firmly; for in that
case, which he thought must be the next oc-
curring condition of affairs, the salesmanship of
the retailers would be applied to finding the
people with money and going after them.
WHAT MANUFACTURERS SAY
The Point of View of some of the brightest
minds among manufacturing interests, especial-
ly in the player branch of the business, has been
gathered by the editor of this Section, who has
recognized the very great importance of finding
some sort of understanding between the manu-
facturing and distributing branches of the trade
with reference to a policy for the coming year.
During the conventions of the associations now
soon to occur in New York it is certain that
7
mur/ccif name
jn the World.
WHAT THE DEALERS SAY
Retail opinion is hard to collect and harder
still to analyze. Indeed, one cannot be at all
confident about how representative any collec-
tion of views may be. The trouble with the re-
tail branch of the business is, of course, that it
is so scattered, so hard to get at, so much ab-
sorbed in the local views of local areas that
the idea of a nationally bounded policy is about
the hardest idea to put over, as one might say,
PIANOS
that can be imagined. Indeed, it is only pos-
sible at this time to say that every merchant or
salesman to whom the writer has talked of these
things has tended wholly to agree with the no-
tion of concentrating on the high-priced and
profitable lines. Allowing for local doubts and
questions that have popped up their heads, this
statement stands.
But there is one point that ought to be
cleared up. One finds a feeling among sales-
men, a feeling too common to be explained on
the ground of accident, that the sale of player-
pianos is in some way more difficult than that
of straight pianos. The reason for the belief,
so widespread among dealers of the smaller
cities, is to be found only in failure to study
the subject or to apply the test of practical ex-
perience. No man who has really tried out the
merits of the player-piano as a sales proposi-
tion can be in any doubt as to its superiority
over the straight instrument in attractiveness.
It is true that the policy advocated here does
not contemplate selling the player-piano on a
competitive price-basis against the upright. The
cheap player-piano will have no better chance
than the cheap upright during these strenuous
times. But when the people have money to
spend, as they have now, and when the cam-
paign on behalf of the player-piano is looked
into, it will be found that it is as easy to sell
a good priced player-piano as to sell a cheap
one; as easy to sell a $1,500 reproducing piano
as a $300 talking machine.
The groundwork of the sales policy is this:
Find out the prospect's money capacity and
sell him up to the limit of that. The financially
large man must not be allowed to buy a cheap
box, nor the smaller man who could buy a
player-piano of fair grade and price be offered
a cheap upright.
Concentrate on. the player.. Make 1918 the
player year. It is the quickest road to trade
prosperity during wartimes.
PEDAL AND PANEL OPERATING DEVICE
Details of Patent Granted to Oscar Johnson and
Assigned to Auto Pneumatic Co.
WASHINGTON, D. C, February 18.—Oscar John-
son, New York, was last week granted Patent
No. 1,252,446 for a pedal and panel operating
mechanism which he has assigned to the Auto
Pneumatic Action Co., same place.
This invention relates to pedal and panel op-
erating mechanism particularly designed for use
in player-pianos. In such instruments pedals
are employed to operate the bellows when the
player mechanism is to be used, and these pedals
are arranged to be folded back inside of the
piano" casing when the player mechanism is not
in use. The opening in the casing is closed by
a door or panel after the pedals have been fold-
ed back. It is desirable and customary to pro-
vide a single mechanism for performing both of
these operations in fixed sequence, and it is the
general object of the invention to improve and
simplify the mechanism used for thus moving
these elements in definite relation to each other.
James M. Heidrick recently celebrated his
tenth anniversary as a salesman for C. C. Mellor,
piano dealer of Pittsburgh, Pa.
ORGANS
E5TEY PIANO COMPANY NEW YORK CITY-