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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
MODERNIZED RETAILING OF SHEET MUSIC
By L E S L I E H. SMITH, Schirmer Music Stores, Inc., New York City
Any musician who has been buying music
for, say, twenty years can look back to the
time when buying it anywhere except in a large
city from either a publisher or very large dealer
was not a pleasure entirely free from bothersome
explanations and annoying delays in securing
just what he wanted.
The business methods of the average dealer
were thoroughly honest, but he was short on
the modern refinements of conducting business.
He was, in the first place, probably more of a
musician than a business man. Secondly, he was
conducting an extremely complex enterprise,
calling for simple and sure working systems to
relieve him and his staff of as much routine as
possible.
General conditions led to complication of the
kind that breeds more complication. Fortunate-
ly the sheet music business is too solidly built
to be led into chaos or even a destructive state,
but until recently the field was never broadly
analyzed, reduced to the few fundamentals that
underlie every business and conducted along
the keen, practical, cleanly competitive lines fol-
lowed by most present-day business ventures.
The chain-store idea has become a proven suc-
cess in numberless lines. We have our chain
restaurants, drug stores, cigar stores, men's fur-
nishings stores, jewelry stores, florists, etc.,
and thus far there has been no field in which
the idea was tried where it was not found sat-
isfactory and profitable. But until a short time
ago the economies to the parent concern and
the undeniably better service to the public of
the chain store were never applied to the selling
of sheet music—a business which had actually
suffered from the lack of these easily acquired
advantages.
At last we have a going and rapidly growing
chain of sheet music stores which are conducted
upon the firmest possible foundation and com-
bine economical overhead with the maximum of
satisfactory service to the music buyer.
This new organization has already, in the
space of only a few months, established twelve
stores in Trenton, N. J.; Troy, N. Y.; Albany,
N. Y.; Schenectady, N. Y.; Buffalo, N. Y.; Cleve-
land, O. (two stores); Los Angeles, Cal.; New-
ark, N. J.; Memphis, Tenn.; Atlanta, Ga., and
New Orleans, La.
The locations fairly well cover the Atlantic
States and provide an outlet on the Pacific
Coast as well. Each store has its standardized
system of selling, advertising, auditing, credit-
ing and general management, supervised from
the home office.
The problem of efficient turning over of stock
is solved by providing each local store with
an almost perfect stock of standard selling num-
bers of all classes and publishers, and by depend-
ing upon intensive direct and indirect advertis-
ing to move them.
Rare and unusual compositions are procurable
from a central stock (the largest in existence) at
the home office as rapidly as wire and special
delivery can bring them.
This system insures the ready availability of
any selection which is in common demand, while
extraordinary publications are always to be had
from a central point. This eliminates any con-
siderable amount of "dead" stock at stores,
while the home office stock, with so many widely
separated outlets, has the maximum chance of
steady turnover.
One might, at first blush, think that local
competitors would frown upon the advent of
one of these chain stores, but the opposite is
the case. The new stores do not cut rates. The
music is sold at the same standard prices that
obtain with all dealers and in isolated instances
where local enterprise does business on a cut-
price basis the newcomer does not meet the
local dealer's prices, but shows him the error
of his ways by maintaining standard prices and
selling the goods.
The expression "newcomer" may be a little
misleading. The chain stores are not, literally
speaking, new stores. They are, in most cases,
simply the sheet music departments of continued
old businesses under new management or old
stores at old stands under new management. In
two instances they are sheet music departments
in new establishments of a nationally known
general musical merchandise house. The big
feature about these chain stores is modern man-
agement.
In one city the sheet music department of a
concern which had formerly sold sheet music
and musical "small goods" was taken over. At
the end of the second month under the new
regime it was found that the sheet music de-
partment did a far greater business than ever
Wishing You a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
"Now I
Know"
KENTUCKY
DREAM
You Didnt Waul
So Why Do You
Want Me Now?)
HERE ARE
All Roads Lead
to Success and
Prosperity
Honeymoon
Waltz
BIG HITS!
Big Sales
Big Profits
FROM
SHEET MUSIC
Records Player Rolls
•• STERN'S »
ti
BLUES'
Jos. W. Stern Mo.
102-104 W. 38th St.
NEW YORK CITY
"Good Night
Dearie"
(MY NAUGHTY
SWEETIE GIVES
TO ME;
"YOU CAN SELL MORE THAN YOU ORDER"
DECEMBER 13, 1919
before in both departments and the "small
goods" did 25 per cent, more than had been done
in both departments during the corresponding
month in any previous year—and this before any
real advertising had been started.
Reverting again to the question of the local
dealers' attitude, these men naturally study the
new management's methods and results as close-
ly as possible. They are quick to appreciate im-
provements when they are demonstrated before
their eyes and discover that only two or three
of them are out of reach in their own establish-
ments. The results are that they advertise, build
up real mailing lists, give closer attention to
window displays, modernize tneir credit systems,
give their stores the remodeling they have been
putting off for five years, distribute with careful
consideration the advertising matter publishers
have been supplying—get greater sales at less
cost than ever before and thank the good for-
tune which brought the new store to town.
The "secret" is, of course, that in every com-
munity there is several times more sheet music
business than has ever been got out of it. Under
intensive management there is plenty for all
local enterprise and the chain store besides.
Altogether, it is a welcome innovation. The
individual in business for himself was not to
blame for the old order. He had a business that
paid, but with w T hich he could not afford to
experiment.
The chain store brings to local territory a
wealth of nationally gained experience and ac-
cepted practice and fits them into conditions
peculiar to the community in which it is to oper-
ate. When these ideas work out the other deal-
ers can adopt them in a cleanly competitive
manner with ful! knowledge that they will prove
profitable.
OVER FOURTEEN BRANCHES OPEN
Irving Berlin, Inc., Now Have Direct Repre-
sentatives in all Sections of Country
Irving Berlin, Inc., who now have over four-
teen branch offices, announce the following:
Chicago office, Grand Opera House Bldg., under
the management of Murray Ritter; Philadelphia,
1107 Chestnut street; Harry Kuh in charge;
Pittsburgh, Dave Wohlman; Boston, 180 Tre-
niont street, Wm. Brookhouse; Cincinnati, Cliff
Burns; Minneapolis, 30 South Seventh street,
Roy C. Gilbert; Detroit, Hal McGahey; San
Francisco, Jack La Follette; Kansas City, John
De Roche; St. Louis, Holland Bldg., Harry La
Pearl, and the Cleveland office is in charge of
Lou Haudman.
MAKES HIT WITH WITMARK SONGS
The Creole Fashion Plate, who recently ap-
peared at the Palace Theatre, registered one of
the most successful programs of his career. In-
cluded in his song numbers were the Witmark
songs, "Let the Rest of the World Go By" and
"California Nights," the former by Ernest R.
Ball and J. Keirn Brennan. The success of
this new Witmark number, "Let the Rest of the
World Go By," not only in this instance, which
was very big, but in many professional pro-
grams, would make it appear that the song has
possibilities of being quite as popular as any-
thing Ernest R. Ball has written.
THE SONG OF THE TRAIN WHISTLE
CAPE MAY, N. J., December 8.—In honor of the
return of Cape May soldiers William Ward-
roff, said to be the only engineer in the United
States who can play popular airs on the same
whistle and who runs the Cape May express on
the Philadelphia & Reading, played "Home,
Sweet Home" and "When the Boys Come
Home" as he brought his train into the yard at
Cape May.
Consult the universal Want Directory of
The Review. In it advertisements are inserted
free of charge for men who desire positions.