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REVIEW
THE
VOL. LXXIX. No. 2 Published Every Saturday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 383 Madison Are., New York, N.Y. July 12, 1924
Single Copies 10 Cents
$2.00 Per Year
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Summer Recitals Make Immediate Sales
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NUMBER of piano merchants who have among their prospects and customers those who have the
time and money to spend most of the Summer playing at seaside or mountain, or at worst passing
their leisure hours at the local country club, have discovered that there is no reason for cutting off
^ the campaigns of exploitation among this type of prospect simply because of this playful tendency
and the season of the year.
There are merchants who have found during the past couple of years that the Summer season offers a
genuine opportunity for bringing instruments of the reproducing grand type to the attention of prospects under
the most favorable circumstances at a time when those same prospects had few business cares to worry them
and are inclined to give attention to anything new that will while away a few hours. Plenty of leisure gives
a line chance for new interests.
Right now there is a dealer in the East who has arranged a very imposing series of reproducing piano
recitals in vacation resorts, and who has completed plans for giving such recitals in at least four country clubs
where he naturally will be able to get in touch with the best elements of the community or at least that ele-
ment which has the money to spend for what it wants.
This same retailer carried out the same idea on a smaller scale last year strictly as a prospect-getting
move to provide material for the Fall sales campaign. He was very agreeably surprised to find that even the
man who had attended the demonstration after a hard round of golf was not too tired to sign an order for
the instrument for delivery to his permanent home and also in most cases to give a check to bind the bargain
immediately.
Piano merchants as a rule have come to realize the value of the recital in exploiting not only the repro-
ducing piano but the straight piano of the better sort, foi despite all that has been said and done there still
exists in certain quarters an indifference, it cannot be really be called prejudice, regarding the instrument that
reproduces piano music by mechanical means. And it is still necessary to prove to the public, and over and
over again in many cases, the fact that the reproducing instrument has been developed to a point where it rivals
and in many respects surpasses the ordinary performance of the manual pianist.
To let this work of exploitation lag during the Summer months means that the momentum gained
through the Winter season has been lost. Another very important factor is that whereas in the Wintertime
the dealer giving the recital is in a sense in competition with the regular concert hall, the theatre and in fact
every form of entertainment that prevails, in the Summer season he is in a position to offer welcome enter-
tainment, even though free, that has but little competition.
That the vacationist is in a mood to listen and in fact buy more easily than when at home can be proven
by an hour's stroll along the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, where staid business men and keen women fall for and
purchase everything from glass beads to Oriental rugs of a type that they would not stop to glance at in
their home towns. This is not to indicate that the reproducing piano comes in the category of what the car-
nival showman terms "slum," but rather that if the vacationist is inclined to spend money for things of little
intrinsic value or use because he has not anything else to do and feels good, the chances of interesting him in
a piano are immeasurably greater.
The country club, the Summer resort hotel, and even the large private Summer residences, all offer
opportunities to the dealer who understands the proper way of giving recitals and who can make his approach
without creating the impression that he is going to stand at the door with his order book in his hand and try
some barehanded selling. Properly handled, the Summer recital will bring the dealer friends as well as cus-
tomers, for it will mean diversion to those who are suffering from ennui, in many cases. The prospect who is
really entertained should not prove difficult to sell.
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