Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
Published by The Music Trade Review, 420 Lexington Avenue, New York
What About Summer Business?
T
HERE are a dozen very good reasons why the Summertime
should be an excellent season for music business. And these
reasons should be sounder than ever this year, particularly
in view of the off season that seems to have prevailed generally
throughout the trade during the Spring.
About the worst thing that could happen to this trade would
be the stagnation during the coming two Summer months of any
appreciable number of music dealers. It is quite possible that
some of these dealers, having gone through a period of depression
and thinking that Summer business is off anyway, may tend to
pull in their horns during July and August.
That's why we are going to try to show them why this is false
reasoning and dangerous reasoning.
Let us grant that sales have not been what they should have
been during the late Winter and Spring months. Why is that not
a good reason for believing that they are due now to come back-
strong? Many dealers of excellent judgment hold to that view,
we find by investigation, and are making their stock anticipations
accordingly.
Several jobbers reported during the last week that their sales
to dealers increased considerably during June, in one case as high
as thirty per cent over last June, which was a very good month.
This indicates that dealers are buying, which in turn shows dealer
confidence. Dealer confidence and optimism are what we need, and
if we have enough of it all will be well this Summer.
We dropped in on Harry Meyers, of the Selmer-Conn Co., last
week and watched him close a $625 sale of band instruments and
heard a salesman report to him another deal of a similar amount
in musical merchandise—this from the first two customers who
entered the store.
"What about this musical merchandise slump?" we asked him.
"What are you doing about it?"
"What slump?" he returned. "Don't know anything about it.
I haven't been here so many months, but since I've been here we've
shown a good increase over the preceding month's business every
month. Just completed a deal for a new store on Fourteenth
street and have just arranged for a third Selmer-Conn store in
Newark. That doesn't sound as though I was looking for any
slump, does it? No, sir, we're too busy here to hear anything
about poor business."
Which goes to prove our point, that business in the music
trade, or in any trade for that matter, will continue to go to the
live fellows who are "too busy to hear about poor business."
You notice that the houses that compete with the regular music
dealers keep up their hustle during the hot weather. The mail order
houses continue their activities during July and August, gathering
in the orders from the customers on the farms and in the outlying-
districts and even a good many from the "inlying" districts that
should be customers of the regular music merchant. Also, the
managers of the chain music stores have their orders from head-
quarters to turn on the steam just a bit more than usual during
July and August and dig up the business. They are competing
against the other managers in the chain and are fearful of letting
down in the hot weather.
One of the annual calamities in the Summer music business is
the perennial fact that the music merchant hopes for nothing, and as
a result he gets little. Releasing his pressure, he makes of the
Summertime one big vacation and fails to expose his customers to
the chance to buy musical instruments. And even when he goes
fishing we doubt if he spends much of that time thinking over his
problems and analyzing possibilities and laying plans for the fall.
One jobber summarizes the situation in this way:
"There will be no so-called Summer Slump this year! Why?
I'll tell you why. In the first place I've sounded out a number of
dealers and their opinion seems to cast an optimistic light on the
situation. They see it this way—that business has been light since
the holiday season that never materialized and that business is long
overdue. They recognize that the demand for musical instruments
is eternal and inevitable. People must have music and musical
instruments. They haven't been buying them and therefore they
need instruments. That's why they're due to start buying.
"In fact, the buying has already started. A great many
dealers have been caught with very low stocks when buying started
to pick up and we note every day the telegraph rush orders increas-
ing. This is an excellent sign, for these telegraph orders always
precede a buying revival. They come when stocks are low. When
the telegraph orders come they always precede a healthy buying
period."
Even if music dealers are not actually busy with sales during
the Summertime they really have no time to waste. They can
spend a light period profitably at this time of year. They can
make fine use of it by lining up their plans for the Fall. The
work of band and orchestra organization among the schools and
institutions always starts afresh in the Fall. Now is the time for
some real preliminary work to develop this business.
Let the dealer turn on the electric fan in his office and get out
his mailing lists of prospects. Let him consider the ways and
means of getting this heavy organization work under way. Sup-
pose, for example, he plans upon putting a big band into one of
the schools. There are certain letters to be written to important
authorities. There will be the lining up of the school board, music
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