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Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
fflJJIC TIRADE
VOL. LXXVI. No. 7
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 373 4th Ave., New York, N. Y.
Feb. 17, 1923
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The Growing "Jam" of Used Pianos
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T
H E Music Industries Chamber of Commerce, through committee, is giving thought to the trade-in
problem with a view of establishing a schedule of depreciation as a guide to the retailer in determining
the value of instruments offered in exchange for new pianos and players.
This work, brought to a successful conclusion, should prove of some value to the industry, but still
we cannot lose sight of the fact that the problem of the trade-in rests not alone on the general over-valuation
of used instruments, but very considerably on the difficulty of disposing of them after they are brought into
the warerooms. This phase of the problem is general rather than local, and has been receiving the retailers'
serious consideration. They are beginning to wonder what the end will be.
It has been declared, and with some reason, that the retail piano business has developed in a large
measure as a replacement business. The records of even conservative dealers tend to bear out this claim for,
in most cases, from 75 to 90 per cent of sales made today bring back a used instrument of one type or another.
Some few years ago, immediately before and after the end of the war, there was a very fair market
for used pianos since the factories were under war handicaps, and, through lack of materials and labor, could
not produce in sufficient quantities to meet demands. Piano shortage reached a stage in certain localities that
available stocks of used pianos were completely cleaned out and ambitious individuals made very fair profits
through buying up these instruments, putting them in condition, and selling them to dealers in other localities.
This situation has changed, however, and at the present time there are scores of dealers with valuable ware-
house space simply clogged with used pianos and players, for which there is no active market.
On various occasions it has been suggested that there be established clearing houses for these, to which
local dealers would send their instruments for disposal, thereby leaving their own sales forces free to develop
new business. There is no record of any such venture proving a success, and, while waiting for a new solu-
tion, used stocks are piling up.
The problem of the square piano has passed but in its place has come that of disposing of upright
pianos of ancient vintage, those with the ebony cases and the grille work, and of 65-note players, or 88-note
player-pianos of early models, which are of less value than uprights because they are neither player nor piano
in the sense of usefulness, and are not worth the expense of changing over into more modern instruments.
It is ridiculous to declare that the number of sales made on an exchange basis is due to the fact that the
number of available purchasers who are not already possessors of instruments is not sufficient to take care of
the output of piano factories as it has averaged for several years past. With a new instrument sold to only
one individual in every five or six hundred of the population during the year, there can be no logical claim that
the point of absorption has been reached. A definite schedule of depreciation, which will mean low allowances
for the majority of instruments offered in exchange, should help to discourage replacements in favor of new
sales. A definite refusal to accept an exchange on instruments more than three to five years old, were it
feasible, would also help in the solution. Meanwhile, used piano stocks are packing the warehouses, and in
some cases wareroom floors, to the exclusion of necessary new stock.
Even worse, these stocks tend to give many dealers an exaggerated idea of their assets which, in turn,
leads them to expansion not warranted by the capital invested in their business, the inevitable forerunner of bad
financing, with the consequent heavy interest charges which today are such an important factor in the industry's
overhead.
All these are conditions that call for a solution, one that must start in the sales department, so that
the problem will be attacked in its fundamentals and solved instead of ameliorated.
Concentration on the solution of the very definite problem of disposing of these instruments profitably
if possible, unprofitably if necessary, is well worthy the attention of the brightest minds of the trade.