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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
MAY
10, 1924
THE POINT OF REVIEW
HE twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the piano depart-
T
ment of the John Wanamaker store in New York, which is
being celebrated this week in conjunction with New York's partici-
pation in National Music Week, is a milestone of more than
ordinary importance in the progress and development of retail piano
merchandising. The entry of the department store in the field of
retail piano selling was a question of great discussion twenty-five
years ago, when the late John Wanamaker announced his intention
of entering this field. The retail piano merchants generally resented
what they considered to be an intrusion in a field which they
regarded as their own, and made that resentment felt with many
of the manufacturers. The manufacturers were cautious in their
consideration of this new outlet, especially those who produced the
higher grade lines, for they felt that such pianos, handled under
the methods which at that time prevailed in many department stores,
would suffer in their name value and prestige from such represen-
tation. It must be remembered that then the department store was
generally considered a menace to the average retail merchant in all
lines, for it was a period of transition in their development, a time
when they were reaching out into fields far distant from dry goods
and allied lines, that up to a few years before they had handled
almost exclusively.
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T was the methods followed by the John Wanamaker house in
its piano department which had much to do with overcoming
this initial prejudice. High-grade lines were finally secured, and
piano retail merchandisers of long experience and expertness
placed in charge of the department. The man who was probably
the most important in developing the Wanamaker piano policies,
outside of the late John Wanamaker himself, to whom the piano
department was always a matter of distinct interest, was the late
M. J. Chapman, who took charge of it shortly after it was installed
in the store. It was he who had to adapt retail piano selling
methods then in vogue to the universal Wanamaker policy of one
price. With but few exceptions the Wanamaker department was
the pioneer in this direction, and its influence has been the most
powerful element in making that the general rather than the excep-
tional rule in the retail piano trade.
«
MS *
HINK of what the one-price system has done in retail piano
selling. Twenty-five years ago, when the Wanamaker depart-
ment was opened, the ordinary course of procedure in buying a
piano in the average retail warerooms was for the prospective
customer to be asked a certain price, and then for him to make an
offer. After haggling and bargaining, an agreement probably was
finally reached. Meantime the prospect was making the rounds
of other warerooms and receiving offers, with the result that the
dealer often cut prices far below what they should be, especially
if the prospect was a better trader than the dealer and the salesman.
This method the Wanamaker department refused to follow. The
instruments were plainly priced and the price on the tag was the
only price. The customer might claim he could get a better price
somewhere else, but the Wanamaker policy meant that if the house
could not get the price it asked, it cheerfully sacrificed the sale and
let it go at that. The way in which the volume of business done
by this department increased year after year—in fact, in one par-
ticular year it was said to have sold more pianos and player-pianos
than any other retail outlet in the trade—demonstrated beyond a
shadow of a doubt that the piano trade in adhering to the old
policy of sliding prices was committing a merchandising error of
the first magnitude, and that the public that was buying from it was
far ahead of the dealers themselves in being willing to buy under
a system that was fair not only to themselves but to the
dealers as well.
I
T
VI
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I ^HE second great contribution of the Wanamaker piano depart-
A ment to the retail merchandising of pianos was the stress that
it always placed upon music as an asset in its selling policies. By
this it is not meant that it was the first to follow this method of
selling. Steinway and Chickering Hall, as well as the Knabe Hall
in the old Eighteenth street warerooms of that house, showed how
the manufacturers used this factor. There were many retail
dealers who held periodic concerts before Wanamaker, as well,
but there were none among the retail trade who ever gave such a
large part to music as he did. With his characteristic merchan-
dising acumen, and in this country of great retail merchandisers
there has never been a merchant who surpassed him in that quality,
he realized that in selling pianos he was not selling combinations
of wood, metal and wool, but instead music, and that in popularizing
music he constantly made a greater buying public for the instru-
ments which he sold. This is a commonplace to-day, but twenty-
five years ago it was seeing further than the ayerage man in the
trade saw, and again it was a policy that time has justified.
better has this policy been exemplified than in the
N OWHERE
long series of concerts which have been given in the Wana-
maker Auditorium, an adjunct to the piano department. One of
the earliest events which will be remembered was the appearance
of Richard Strauss, the eminent German composer, with his own
Festival Orchestra, during his first American tour. Not only
because of the fame of the artist was this event memorable, but
in its train came a discussion in the musical world that effectually
settled once and for all the question of whether or not artists, what-
ever their standing, might appear in concerts promoted by com-
mercial enterprises. When Dr. Strauss appeared, the purists of
the musical world were loud in their cries of commercialism, were
loud in their wails over the prostitution of art to commercialism,
never realizing that work such as was being done by the Wana-
maker store through its free concerts was what made the great
concert audiences of the present day and was creating a musical
public in this country that without question is the greatest in the
world. The bars to the concert hall were thrown down by such
pioneers in this work as John Wanamaker.
r
I A HE number of artists of international and national fame who
*- have appeared in the Wanamaker concerts during the last
quarter of a century are too numerous to enumerate. Only a
few of the outstanding names, such as George W. Chadwick of
the New England Conservatory, Horatio Parker of the Yale
University School of Music, John Philip Sousa, Reginald de
Koven, Creatore, Anna Case, Reinald Werrenrath, David Bispham,
Godowsky, Sauer, Ornstein, Dohnanyi, Hambourg, Stokowski,
with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and two of the outstanding
organ virtuosi of the world, Marcel Dupre and Charles M. Cour-
boin, can be mentioned here. Suffice it to say, however, that the
Wanamaker house never considered any artist too great or any
program too heavy for its invited guests from the general public,
and never was its trust in the musical taste of the great masses of
the people not justified. Not only did it carry on this work and
still carries it on, but its contribution to American musical creative
power through its annual American Composers' Week, which the
store has held for some time, has exerted a wide influence.
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Mf K
J. CHAPMAN was, of course, the real pioneer in estab-
• lishing the department. Following him came the late Ben
F. Owen, who is remembered with affection by many piano men.
Upon his death he was succeeded by his assistant, Morris Lamb,
who only lately was succeeded by Thomas H. Fletcher. All of
these men have steadily carried on the policies of the house which
have made the department what it is to-day.
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K
K
' I ^HESE are the things which make the twenty-fifth year of the
* John Wanamaker piano department an event of more than
passing moment in the retail piano trade. The contributions it has
made to the advancement of retail piano merchandising have been
great, but they have been matched by its contribution to the
advancement of music in the territory which it serves.
M
THE REVIEWER.