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THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
AUGUST 2,
1924
THE POINT OF REVIEW
A Fiftieth Anniversary
IFTY years ago on July 27 George W. Armstrong entered the
F employ
of the Baldwin Piano Co. in a minor position. To-day,
as president of that great institution, he has completed a half
century of continuous service with it, an anniversary which was
marked with a celebration by his co-workers in the great Cincinnati
firm. When he entered the service of the Baldwin house it was
known as D. H. Baldwin & Co., and was a retail concern. Besides
the store which it had in Cincinnati, it had but two other branches,
those in Louisville and Indianapolis. To-day the firm has factories
in Cincinnati and Chicago, numerous branches in different parts of
the United States and sales organizations in thirty-two foreign coun-
tries. This great development has taken place during Mr. Arm-
strong's connection with it and in its progress he has played a most
prominent part.
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HE contributions of the Baldwin house to the American piano
industry have been many. It was one of the leading pioneers
in the development of the artistic side of the Western section of
the American piano industry, for many years being one of the very
few houses in that section of the trade which produced a concert
grand. It carried the fame of the American piano abroad when
it exhibited and took high prizes for it at great foreign exposi-
tions in competition with the best productions of the piano factories
of the world. It has been chosen and used upon the concert plat-
form by such great artists as Vladimir de Pachmann, Wilhelm
Bachaus, Feodor Chaliapin, Raisa and Rimini, Mason and Polacco,
Florence Macbeth, Raoul Pugno, Xavier Scharwenka and Alfredo
Casella, to say nothing of many others. It was a pioneer in the
development of the player-piano. To-day its Eden Park plant in
Cincinnati is a model of what a modern piano factory should be in
its arrangements for swift and quality production and is invariably
visited by foreign manufacturers who come to study American
factory productive methods.
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HERE is little to be said of Mr. Armstrong save in the terms
of the institution of which he is the head. A retiring man, he
has been content to see his efforts and his work visualized in the
achievements of the Baldwin plant and in its world-wide fame.
There he has always been a man who has approached the building
of a piano purely from the standpoint of an artist, an attitude which
is essential in creating the modern piano of the highest grade. To
those who have co-operated with him in striving for his ideals he,
in turn, has given support and that support with intense conviction
that in the long run commercial success in the piano industry can
come alone from that basis. That his attitude has been justified, the
short and inadequate sketch given at the beginning of this article of
the present standing of the Baldwin house is the best of evidence.
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N Sunday, July 27, the co-workers of Mr. Armstrong gathered
in his country residence at Remington in an effort to give
expression to the honor in which they hold their chief. They pre-
sented him as a token of their esteem with a handsome set of Rook-
wood ware, the product of perhaps the most famous of American
potteries, consisting of a large platter and a dozen plates decorated
with illustrations to remind him of incidents and places intimately
associated with his successful career. The celebration was an op-
portunity for many reminiscences, a review of the interesting events
of his business life and the history of the company which is a
monument to it. In that celebration the entire industry unites and
congratulates, first, Mr. Armstrong himself, and, secondly, the Bald-
win Co., of which he is the head.
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What Is a Good Salesman?
piano man, who has had no little experience
A WELL-KNOWN
in directing retail sales forces, made the flat statement the
other day that only once in his long experience had he ever seen
a retail piano salesman make good from the start in a new position.
The exception was that of a salesman who, upon his third call in
a new position (and he was doing cold canvassing at that), received
from the lady of the house the welcome question: "How did you
know we had just made up our minds to buy a piano ?" The sales-
man found an adequate excuse for his apparent knowledge and
brought the prospect to the warerooms where he closed the sale the
same day.
was chance, of course, and chance is a very slim founda-
tion upon which to depend for sales. What this statement
does show is the necessity of the house giving every possible support
to the new salesman during his probation period, training him in
the proper way to sell pianos, and doing all that it can. to keep him
going during that discouraging time which lasts until the first sale
is made. The first month in a new job is the time that tells the
tale as to whether or not the novice salesman is going to be a
producer for the house which employs him in the future. It is the
time when he depends most upon support from the man who is direct-
ing his efforts and the time when that support is the most valuable.
This may cost the sales manager a good part of his time and the
house a certain amount of expense, but if the man has any pos-
sibilities at all, there is no question that it is time and energy
well invested.
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A LL of this brings up the question of why there are not more
*• *• good retail piano salesmen. In The Review a few weeks ago
a letter from a retail salesman placed the responsibility for this
condition squarely at the door of the dealer himself and produced a
good deal of evidence to support this contention. There are retail
piano merchants, and not a few of them in the trade, whose sole
idea is volume of sales and who consider the man as best in their
selling organization who turns in the largest number of unit sales,
irregardless of the terms and conditions on which they are made.
It is a natural enough attitude for the dealer to take, but one that
in the long run is going to prove entirely mistaken, as an analysis
of the books of such a dealer will almost invariably show. Gross
sales are by no means a criterion of actual worth in the piano busi-
ness ; there are too many other elements which must be taken into
consideration.
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\ I 7 " H A T is a good piano salesman? The good salesman is the
» ' man whose average of sales shows the highest percentage of
profit to the house which employs him. Invariably when a sales-
man's sales show an average high percentage of profit, he will be
found well up among the leaders in the number of units to his
credit. Now to make a good sale in the retail piano business means,
first, that the prospect must he a good credit risk, and, second, that
the terms on which the instrument is sold are such that the customer
can meet them with no undue strain on his resources. Poor credit
almost invariably means a repossession ; overselling invariably means
past due. Both of these are the greatest of reducers of the net
profit. Furthermore, terms must be within reason, thus reducing
the average time of the outstanding lease paper and increasing the
turnover of the house.
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A
' I HE salesman who is trained in his first position to take all
*• these factors into consideration is the good salesman in every
sense of the word. The house which turns out such men is an
asset, not only to itself but to the entire industry as well. But it is
only in the first period of a salesman's experience that he can be
made to see the importance of these factors. After all is said and
done, the salesmen in the piano industry are pretty much what the
dealers who employ them make them. If there is a dearth of good
men it is the dealer's fault. The reform must come from that
direction, for that is the only place from which it can come. The
sooner that is realized the sooner will the cry for more good sales-
men disappear, for then the demand will be filled as the industry's
needs warrant it.
T H E REVIEWER.