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Cable AddresR: uElbHl, Now Yorh:"
Vol. LXXVI[
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 17, 1923
No. 20
TRAINING THE RETAIL MUSIC SALESMAN
H E announcement that the Music Industries Chamber of Com
merce is about to undertake the compilation of a corre
spondence course in salesmanship for the retail music salesman is
interesting in that it indicates the seriousness with which the prob
lem of the trained retail salesman is oeing taken by the organized
music industries. However, no matter how thorough and compre
hensive such a course may be, little can be accomplished by it
l!nless the action of the Chamber is backed by the . co-operation of
the individual music merchant.
The trade, as a whole, has long been aware of the scarcity of
req.lly trained men among those who come in direct contact with
the ultimate purchasers of musical instruments. Spasmodic effort~
have been made at times to overcome this deficiency, but in every
case they have been checked and hindered by the merchant himself.
the man who it might be th ought would be most willing to give hi5
full co-operation and spare no efforts in making them a ~ ucce ss.
An instance of this was th e sales manship school conducted more
than a year by th<.: K ew York Music Merchants' Association, which,
while it was a success so fa r as organization and curriculum wen'
concerned, failed to achieve its object primarily because compara
tively few of the retail music merchants in the metropolitan dis
trict bestirred themselves to have their men attend the courses.
The retail music trade to-day suffers continually because of a
lack of trained salesm<.:n. Th e man who sells musical instruments
at retail necessarily requires a more thorough understanding of hi s
merchandise and what it represents in the ultimate pleasure and
education that it gives to the owners than is the case with most
lines of retail selling. L a ck of this knowledge essentially means
lost sales. The ultimate solution of the problem lies in the hands of
each individual merchant.
T
THE PROGRESS OF THIRTY-FIVE YEARS
I
T is only when some distinctive anniversary occurs that the rapid
flight of time can be adequately measured in connection with
the advance of any industry. T o-day, in the piano industry, self
playing instruments are still regarded to some extent as a recent
REVIEW
]\/OVEMBER
17, 1923
advan ce and retain to some degre e, at lea st, an eleme nt of nowlty ,
especially to those men who have been connected with the industry
since this type of instrument's inception.
Yet, the self-playing instrument ha s surely gone far past its
majority, a con<4ition which is the more strikingly apparent when
such an announcement as that recently sent out by C. ]. Heppe &
Son, of Ph iladelphi a, comes to hand . Thi s well-known Quaker
City house is now conducting a se ries of eleven concerts which
mark the thirty-fifth an niversa ry of the introduction of self-playing
instruments in Philad elphia in 1888 by that hou se.
No more fitting celebration cou ld be g iv<.:n . The advance that
has been made in the self-playing instrument during the past thirty
five years is remarkably demonstrated in these concerts by the use
of the Duo-Art, a ty pical example of the remarkable mechanical and
technical advance which has marked these years of steady progress.
It is perhaps too bad that one of those first crude self-playing in
struments, which in their day were a marv('\ o f the indu stry, could
not be h eard in conj unction with thi s latest of the developments
that have sprung from it ·the modern reproducing piano. For then
only could the inventive genius, which has steadily contributed to
ward s the dev elopment of thi s la tter in strument, be measured and
the great advance that has beE'u mad e be adequately perceived.
Yet, when it is considered. that in these conce rts the personal
interpretations of such world-famous pianists as Bauer , Paderewski
and Friedman will be heard with every exact detail of their s ~~'le s,
then we can see what the industry ha s achieved during thi s genera
tion and see far more vividly than is usually the case the contribu
tion which it ha s made to the musical dev elopment of the country.
C. J. Heppe & Son are to be congratulat<.:d on thu s distinctly mark
ing an anniversary that is of inter es t not on ly to evrry man within
the industry but to all \ovho ar~ intC'l"esterl in '\merica's musical
advance.
NEITHER ~_HE AGE NOR THE
T
TI~_~-_- __
I
H E failure of a certain Brook lyn piano dealer see ms to have
aroused wide comm ent in the metropolitan press. In fact,
these papers have taken such a n inter est in thi s event that the
New York 'W orld went <;0 far as to devote a good deal of space
to it upon its editorial page. But the gem of all comment was an
article which appeared in the ne\o\(s column s of the Kew York
Herald, which seized this opportunity to devriop, as it said , "the
hopelessness of the struggle against an era of jazz and speed and
joys less subtle than those which it (the piano firm) enoe
provide_"
Of course, th<.:re is always an elem<.:nt o f pathos in the failure
of any old-established business firm a nd thi s particular Brooklyn
piano merchant was truly a pioneer in his fidd . But there is proba
bly more behinrl the failure than th e newspaper commentators
could discover. To blame the tim e~ and th e age is usually a generic
method of covering <1.n in<1.de!,]urlte kn ow le<4gE' 111 rf'Jation t () th e
(vent that is being analyzed.
Vie may live in a period whm life goes faster than it did in
the sixties, but w e also liv<.: in a period when the piano, with all
its " subtle joys," has a widn a nd morC' powerful grasp on th e
public than was the c:\sC' in those days. Commercial death comes
to-day largely becau se of a failure to adopt methods to changing
conditions, and, no doubt, if this Brooklyn f'Vf' nt were carefu ll y
analyzed, something of thi~ would be found behind it.
\ Vhile thi s one failure arou sed th e interest of the \few York
Eewspapers, there have been, within the past fevv weeks, a number
of anniversary celebrations by de:\] er s whu sell pianos. These have
ranged through the thirtieth, forti eth and Ul-' to the seventieth year,
and everyone of these hou se'S is to-day greater, bigger a nd
better than it has been at any time in it s history, long as it
may be.
The failure of one piano merchant c1 0C3 not mean that the piano
is suffering in competition with the other pleas ures of the times and
it becomes in significant as an index of conditions when it is taken
in relation to thousands of those dea lers who to-day are flouri shing
like the traditional green bay tree .
The fact that the Music Indu stries Chamoer of Commerce took
this matter up immediately w ith the va riou s n ewspapers is a matter
for congratulation. Experience ha::. proven that stories inimical to
the industry are written not from malice but from ignorance of
the facts.