Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
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VOL. LXXVI1I. No. 18 Published Every Saturday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 383 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. May 3, 1924
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Summer Is No Dealer's Period of Rest
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H E approach of the annual conventions brings to mind that the summer season is not far away and
at the same time raises the "question as to just what may be expected in the matter of business during"
the warm months of the year. Some few seasons ago the question could have been easily answered
because a great majority of music merchants accepted the summer months as a dull period and guided
themselves accordingly. Sales efforts were allowed to lag, advertising appropriations were reduced and gen-
eral lassitude allowed to permeate the establishments.
"'
Last year, however, something upset the apple cart. It might have been the prevalence of cool
weather until the summer was well advanced; it might have been the general prosperity of the country; it
might have been the building operations conducted during the spring months. Whatever the cause, however,
the fact remained that the music business kept up remarkably well right through June, July and August. It
was so good in fact that dealers were prone to comment upon it in a self-satisfied way and at times even to
complain that they were too busy to take their annual rest.
Having placed the bugaboo of summer dullness in the discard and proven that there are sales to be
made and plenty of them during the mid-summer season, if the conditions are right and particularly if the
proper effort is put forth, the average merchant will have to offer something more than the established prec-
edent of five or ten years ago as an excuse for summer business that is below par.
It is all well enough to talk about the music business being a seasonable one. Perhaps in taking one
line alone and concentrating on that line the seasonal idea might hold good. But the summer season for-
merly was the season of portable talking machines, of musical instruments of the band or orchestra type that
may be carried around, but the season for those instruments now has been spread out right through the
twelve months. The piano business was formerly confined to the cooler months, when the family went indoors
for its entertainment, but last year it was proven that even in warm weather it was quite possible to interest
piano prospects for the entertainment that was theirs during the time they were for one reason or another
found in the home.
Perhaps the coming summer season will not bring a volume of business that will measure up to that of
last year. But a new rule has been established that should be lived up to even though the first four months of
1924 may not have made any great gain over the corresponding period of 1923. However, there is every reason
to believe, as the year progresses, that there will be a tendency to establish a general average and that this will
bring a summer demand.
There are a good many dealers, and piano dealers at that, in this country of ours who for years have
gone right through the summer serenely doing a real volume of business because they adopted methods de-
signed to that end. We refer to the city dealers who have followed their prospects to the summer resorts,
either soliciting them by mail and having their salesmen call on them directly from headquarters or establish-
ing temporary branches in seashore and mountain towns for the sake of placing instruments in country homes.
Because a prospect may be inclined to spend several months with"his family in his bungalow at the sea-
shore or mountains is not to say that that same family should be deprived of musical entertainment for that
extended period. Just because a prospect and his family for one reason or another cannot spend the summer
at a resort or can enjoy only a limited vacation of two weeks or so is no reason why a piano or other musical
instrument can not be placed in the home during the summer if the proper sales effort is used.
The main point is that, if the music merchant and his staff are in the mood to lay off during the sum-
mer and accept that period as a period of rest from their labors, they must be satisfied with reduced income.
If they simply accept the summer as one of the four seasons and work right along through it results are
bound to show themselves. In short summer sales results depend largely upon the point of view.