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THE MUSIC TRADE
NOVEMBER 27, 1920
REVIEW
Wherein the Editor of This Player Section Confuses and Puts to Rout the
Apostles of Gloom, and Concludes to the Satisfaction of Himself at Least
That the World Is a Pretty Good Sort of a Place to Live in After All
in selling pianos and player-pianos on prices
and terms and not on their functions and abil-
ities, it is to be expected that the profits of
"And the orators orated and the air was filled with cries,
the
business shall remain limited. The mere fact
But all of it was piffle and most of it was lies."
In very truth we are doing extraordinarily that, no matter whether times are hard or soft,
well. At a time when "basic industries" are whether it be a lean or a fat year, the same
crying bitterly because they cannot keep their number of pianos and player-pianos manages
cake and eat it too, when the profiteers are to get itself made an'd sold furnishes the best
screaming to high heaven because they have to possible evidence that there is something lack-
get out and work again, the good old music ing in our methods of selling. Either the
business goes on in its good old way, and quiet instrument itself or the manner of selling it
though it has been it shows decided signs of de- must be to blame. It cannot be the piano or
clining to remain dead to suit anybody's con- the player-piano. Certainly it cannot be the
venience. The fact of the matter is, of course, player-piano, which, naturally speaking, ought
that business men are the most nervous crea- to sell itself on its own abilities. It must be the
tures on earth. They are either up in the seventh manner of selling.
heaven or down in the lowest circle of what
The Steady Old Hoss
Dante politely called the Inferno. To remain
on earth between the two extremes of wild
Really there is no getting away from that
bliss and wild despair seems to be beyond their conclusion. The people may lay off from buying
capacity. Perhaps there is more than usually for a few weeks at a time, as they have been
something apt in the music industries feeling doing lately, but in the end, before the year
slightly peeved when things began to slack up is over, they have always come back into the
this Fall, for the music industries have been market in sufficient numbers to make up the
experiencing a rather unusual prosperity. deficiency of earlier months. Year by year the
Pianos and player-pianos, as it happens, are ex- output shows nearly the same figures. Year
pensive and beautiful articles of commerce, but by year that output is consumed. Plainly the
they are not, and never have been, articles on few who buy pianos because they want to play
which enormous profits can be made. More- them, and the many who buy pianos and player-
over, as long as the music retailers will persist pianos because they want something to furnish
We Keep Plugging Along
UDELL
Ike
Cabinet
of
Distinction
ana
Quality
Tie
Udell Works
1204 28tn Street
Indianapolis, Indiana
dance accompaniments and to look nice in the
parlor, between them consume the whole output
year after year. Yet these two classes of the
population certainly do not include all. There
are many thousands, nay hundreds of thou-
sajids, of persons who do not buy straight pianos
because they cannot play, and do not buy
player-pianos because they cannot stand the
racket which their neighbors set up with their
player-pianos. If we were reaching these classes
now in any considerable proportion, we should
be assured of enough business to keep us going
even if all the present sources were entirely
dried up. When men who sell player-pianos
complain about business in this line being bad
they simply show that, allowing for the general
mental condition of the entire people at any
time, they are not looking after the oppor-
tunities which lie all around them, but are con-
tinuing to trust to the old unsystematic ways
of advertising and salesmanship. One axiom,
though it seems to be paradoxical, applies with
peculiar force just now. It is this: "When
there is a lag in buying don't advertise cut
prices." Once cut prices are advertised the
people will wait to see them come down still
further. In such a case, if there has been no
profiteering, advertise merits, functions, ad-
vantages, and above all values. That is the only
sort of advertising to be undertaken in slack
times by an industry which has no profiteering
to explain away. That industry is the player
industry if it is any.
No Down to Come
At a recent meeting of the Chicago Piano
Club the whole question of prices was brought
up before a large gathering of salesmen by one
of the best-known superintendents in the trad',
namely, by E. J. Fishbaugh, of the A. B. Chase
Co. The discussion was begun in the direction
of piano construction, but in the course of
question asking and question answering it got
around quite naturally to prices. It was, we
think, Eugene Whelan, of the W. W. Kimball
Co., who focused the entire matter by saying
that the retail salesmen have been allowing their
customers to believe that piano prices have been
'way up and are bound to come 'way down. As Mr.
Whelan well said, customers have been coming
in to look at pianos and player-pianos and ask-
ing when prices are to come lower. A recent
visitor to Mr. Whelan's warerooms had re-
marked, "You'll soon be d
d glad to give them
away." This attitude is partly due, of course,
to the extraordinarily foolish newspaper propa-
ganda in respect to high prices, propaganda
which might have its justification in some
directions, but certainly has had none in respect
to the piano trade. If retail salesmen would only
take the trouble to acquaint themselves with
the extraordinary cost of making pianos and
player-pianos to-day it would be a good deal
better for everybody, for then they would be
able to show more convincingly than most of
them appear now to be able to show that piano
prices are not too high just now, money having
its present value, and that in consequence there
is not a chance of any lowering in prices until
labor consents to take smaller wages and the
world-wide shortage of manufactured goods in
distinction to the world-wide superfluity of
{Continued on page 8)