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Musical Merchandise
Published by The Music Trade Review, 383 Madison Avenue, New York
The
Spirit of Dan Andrews
Is Still With Us
Musical Instrument Stores as They
Once Were, as Some Now Are,
and as They All Ought to Be
First of a Series of Articles by C. V. Buttelman
C. V. Buttelman
T
WENTY years ago in my home town
Dan Andrews ran what we used to call
"the music store." It used to seem to me
quite a wonderful institution, with its clutter-
ing collection of odds and ends of musical
merchandise, sheet music, sewing machines and
miscellaneous "notions." Dan was the sole
proprietor, janitor, clerk and bookkeeper. The
store, for all I knew, was open continuously
except for the occasionl periods during the day
when the front door was locked and a be-
smirched card announced that Dan would be
"back in ten minutes." Dan put up the ten-
minute card whether he was going home to
lunch, going across the street to play pool, or
to the barber shop for a haircut—which he did
occasionally. Sometimes he was gone an hour
or more, and when we remonstrated with Dan
he said that he put up the sign for the benefit
of folks who came to the store not more than
ten minutes before he returned. He didn't ex-
pect anyone who arrived earlier
to wait for him longer than ten
minutes, and the sign sometimes
helped him catch the stray cus-
tomers who arrived at a time
when the placard was telling the
truth.
take your order and "send for it." You then
stopped in the store every few days to "call
for it"—and, usually, for the first half-dozen
stops you would be told that "it ain't come in
yet." I suspected in several instances of my own
impatient waiting for such an order that the rea-
son "it ain't come in yet" was because Dan had
forgotten to send for it, but he was such a good-
natured bluffer that I never had the nerve to
ask him point blank when or whether he had
mailed the order.
In spite of all the shortcomings of Dan's
business policy, and in spite of his lack of sys-
tem and the notoriously out-of-stock condition
of his store, Dan eked out a living; people kept
on coming into his store to buy odds and ends
of merchandise, publications, etc., mainly, I
suppose, because there was no other place in
that section to which they could go.
Dan's Time Is Past
There have been many changes in the music
store business since Dan's time and in my old
home town there is now a temple of music
which bears little resemblance to the Andrews
Chasing E's and A's
And there you have an ap-
proximation of the standards of
Dan's store and business meth-
ods.
If you called on him to
buy a violin string of a certain
kind, Dan usually had a violin
string. Sometimes he lacked E's
and had plenty of A's, and if he
couldn't find the particular item
you wanted after rummaging
through several drawers a n d
boxes he would very obligingly
music store and bazaar. Scattered throughout
the country are many such institutions repre-
senting the modern trend in music merchandis-
ing and service, yet in spite of all the advances
that have been made, even in some of the beau-
tiful new "music emporiums" of the latest
vintage, there is evidence that the spirit of Dan
Andrews is still with us to combat the modern
spirit of music-store service which, though uni-
versally recognized, is not yet universal in prac-
tice.
"The trouble with us," said a veteran dealer
in a midwestern city, "is that we grew up with
the piano and talking machine game and the
small instrument business grew up without us.
Big unit sales and correspondingly large profits
in pianos and phonographs filled our vision; com-
petition became more and more keen, and we
developed our sales methods accordingly;
'small goods,' crowded into the background, and
often regarded and treated as a necessary evil,
showed up at a disadvantage if for no other
reason than because we gave no attention to
them. We even considered discontinuing the
'department'—if it deserved the dignity of that
title. Other dealers whom I knew
were of about the same kind, and,
from what I have observed, in
every instance where a dealer
looked upon his small goods de-
partment with disfavor it actually
was a liability, not only in point
of the figures on the balance
sheet, but more or less of a
detriment to the reputation of
the store, which, perhaps, out-
side of the small goods depart-
ment kept up a high standard."
Profit or Throw It Out
The Kind of a Store Dan Andrews Never Knew
Another dealer in another city
had this to say: "I had made up
my mind that we would either
throw out the small goods depart-
ment or make it pay. Other stores
(Continued on page 5)