Music Trade Review

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The Music Trade Review
REVIEW
MAY 19, 1928
It will be well for those dealers attending the convention to
get in touch with some of the Packard men and discuss the system.
The information thus obtained will represent a substantial return
for the cost in time and monev of the visit to New York
Properly Approached, the Public Will
Buy Musical Instruments
(Registered in the U. S. Patent Office)
Published Every Saturday by
Federated Business Publications, Inc.
at 420 Lexington Avenue, New York
President, Raymond Bill; Vice-Presidents, J. B. Spillane, Randolph Brown; Secre-
tary and Treasurer, Edward Lyman Bill; Assistant Secretary, L. B. McDonald:
Assistant Treasurer, Wm. A. Low.
B. BRITTAIN WILSON, Editor
CARLETON CHACE, Business Manager
W. H. MCCLEARY, Managing
Editor
RAY BILL, Associate Editor
F. L. AVERY, Circulation Manager
E. B. MUNCH, Eastern Representative
BOSTON O F F I C E :
JOHN H. WILSON, 324 Washington St.
Telephone: Main 6950
WESTERN DIVISION:
FRANK W. KIRK, Manager
E. J.
NEALY
Republic Bldg., 209 S. State St., Chicago
Telephone: Wabash 5242-5243
Cable: Elbill New York
Telephone: Lexington 1760-71
No. 86
O
May 19, 1928
No. 20
The Packard Selling Method
N several occasions The Review has published articles
regarding the success being met with by the Packard
Music House in building up a sales volume at reduced
cost through the medium of group instruction classes conducted
in Ft. Wayne and neighboring towns. The company has been
carrying on this work for eleven months, and the results are be-
coming steadily more satisfactory as various problems have been
met and overcome. The experiences of this company present a
convincing answer to the question as to whether group instruction
can be made to produce immediate results in sales while building
up a future market for piano distribution at the same time.
The Packard Co. employs no magic, but bases its operations on
sound business methods. The first group instruction classes con-
ducted experimentally proved very satisfactory, but some little
thing lacking to turn public interest into sales was discovered.
The company studied the problem and found the answer. The
result has been a most substantial increase in sales at a saving in
selling cost declared to be in the neighborhood of 60 per cent.
Senate to Investigate
Chain Store Systems
i
Resolution Introduced by Senator Brookhart
Calling for Investigation of This System of
Merchandising
WASHINGTON, D. C, May 16.—A thorough in-
vestigation of the chain store situation in the
United States is to be made by the Federal
Trade Commission, under the terms of a resolu-
tion introduced in the Senate by Senator Brook-
hart of Iowa, and adopted May 12. Introduc-
tion of the measure followed the receipt of com-
plaints that chain stores in various localities
throughout the country were pursuing practices
which placed the independent retailer at an
unfair disadvantage. The demand for an inves-
tigation was also strengthened by recent reports
of mergers of chain store systems, it now being
I
Why Canvassing Is Vital
N an article in The Review last week L. H. Jacobi, of the
Baldwin Piano Co., New York, said regarding canvassing:
"Canvassing is valuable to a piano house in that it brings
new business, extra business—business that will never be brought
into the store in any other way. There is no more relation between
the routine business and the sales secured through canvassing than
there is between selling pianos and selling elephants. The two
ends of the business are as different as night and day."
There is the story in a nutshell, and answers most emphatically
those of the trade who are inclined to belittle canvassing methods
as being too expensive and troublesome for the volume of business
secured by that means. As The Review has pointed out time and
time again, piano selling depends primarily upon contact, and can-
vassing provides the fundamental means for securing contacts
with prospective purchasers. The difficulties complained of are
not to be charged against canvassing, but are rather due to faulty
methods.
Canvassing in one form or another, as is best suited to the
particular territory, is just as necessary as advertising and the
maintenance of warerooms. It has never been so important as at
the present time, when practically every industry is depending upon
visits to the home and the office as a means of getting the first
call on the consumer's dollar. If some piano dealers insist on de-
pending for sales upon those who respond to the advertising appeal
and personal urge and fight their way through a horde of hungry
salesmen to the doors of the piano warerooms, then the sales vol-
ume of the industry is due to take a further drop.
Canvassing is hard work, but properly handled the results will
1>e found to offer full compensation for the extra effort. It is
significant that piano houses who are reporting sales totals that
measure up with or exceed the average usually maintain large out-
side crews. They may be called canvassers or outside salesmen, or
whatnot, but the point is that they are out in the field looking for
the business where it is most likely to be. It is the sales volume
developed by this means that represents the difference between
profit and loss.
estimated that there are some 4,000 systems
with a total of over 100,000 stores.
The Federal Trade Commission inquiry will
be designed to determine the extent to which
recent consolidations have been effected in viola-
tion of the anti-trust laws, the extent to which
consolidations or combinations of such organ-
izations are susceptible to regulation under the
Federal statute, and what legislation, if any,
should be enacted for the purpose of regulating
and controlling chain store distribution.
The commission also will be required to re-
port to the Senate the extent to which the chain
store movement has tended to create a mon-
opoly or concentration of control in the dis-
tribution of any commodity either locally or
nationally; evidences indicating the existence of
unfair methods of competition in commerce or
of agreements, conspiracies or combinations in
restraint of trade involving chain store distribu-
tion; the advantages or disadvantages of chain
store distribution in comparison with those of
other types of distribution as shown by prices,
costs, profits and margins, quality of goods
and services rendered by chain stores and other
distributors or resulting from integration, man-
agerial efficiency, low overhead or similai
causes; how far the rapid increase in the chain
store system of distribution is based upon actual
savings in costs of management and operation
and how far upon quantity prices available only
to chain store distributors; whether or not such
quantity prices constitute a violation of either
the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton
Act, or any other statute, and what legislation
if any, should be enacted witli reference to such
quantity prices.
Tin.' music Moiv of the Karl Shepherd Co.,
Klamath Falls, Ore., of which F. T. Shepherd
is the head, has been closed out and Mr. Shep-
herd will devote his time to other interests.
The Magazine Number of The Review
Including the Musical Merchandise Section
Issues Every Second Week in the Month—Next Issue June 9