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WESTERN COMMENT
A Breath of Fresh Air
REVIEW OFFICE, REPUBLIC BUILDING, CHICAGO, I I I . , FEB. 13,
taken up with other things, it is not given to the sale of pianos.
Now, why are these merchants not giving their time to pianos, but
rather are spending it on other goods? Because they have thought
fit to put the piano in the background of their efforts. Why
should they have decided to do this? Because most piano mer-
chants never really did sell pianos at all. Piano merchants have
always let pianos be bought. No matter how strenuously they
might go in for puzzle contests, advertising of certain kinds, or
any other plan calculated to bring prospects in to the store, their
actual selling has commonly been a matter of letting the customer
buy whatever he or she most easily could be persuaded to sign for,
so long as it was something in the shape of a piano. How many
merchants really have cared enough about the high-class, work-
of-art pianos carried by them to make those pianos the feature of
the community life which their merits would entitle them to be?
Very few, say I. Merchants have always taken the line of least
resistance, and have educated their own salesmen to the same view
of things. Naturally, then, the public has come to believe that all
pianos are much alike, and moreover has entirely escaped being
inoculated with the truth that a fine piano is a fine work of art
which every gentleman's house and every lady's living room should
contain. These are hard words, but they are the truth, and mer-
chants who say that they cannot sell pianos are only to-day reaping
the reward of their own words and works."
1928
THE man who deals directly with the public, especially if his ex-
perience has been great and his' mind one capable of sifting and
analyzing his impressions, may be depended upon
Pait
to possess stores of knowledge highly and imme-
and
diately applicable to present-day trade conditions.
Present
There was a time when piano salesmen, in the
great cities at least, were not only high-class men always, but men
of standing and authority, themselves interested deeply in the pianos
they sold and nearly always personally able to play the piano with
more or less expertness. That a piano salesman has frequently
made a success while lacking the ability to show off a piano is
doubtless true, but to argue therefrom that it is better not to know
anything about touch or tone is not merely fallacious, but absurd;
for it suggests that the selling of pianos is merely a rather dis-
reputable game, played by men whose principal qualification is an
excess of "smartness" over sincerity. One remembers the sensa-
tion caused in New York's piano circles years ago by John Wana-
maker upon the opening of his first piano department, when he
said that henceforth piano buying need not be a matching of wits
between salesman and customer, but an open transaction, with all
cards face up on the table. Veterans laughed and said that it could
not be done; but it was done and is being done still. Salesmen
of the type of Sturtevant, of Ferdinand Meyer, of Clifford Cox,
are not so conspicuous as they once were, but they have their suc-
cessors even to-day, men who understand the game, who have sold
first-class pianos all their lives, who are still selling first-class
pianos, and who, generally, are just a little puzzled by some of the
current clamor over the alleged passing of the piano. To talk to
such men is to obtain" a view of the current situation which one
does not obtain from contact with the bright modern spirits who
are unable to think about buying and selling save through the
medium of a hieratic language not understood of the people, a
language filled with strange words like "trend," "sales resistance,"
"consumer demand," "psychology of appeal" and lots more to the
same effect; in a word, with that strange jargon which to-day is
used to clothe the simple ideas of our commercial predecessors as
iin terrible and impenetrable mystery. Let us, then, for refresh-
ment, turn to the simple utterances of one who, unmoved by the
clamor, or by the solemn ballyhoo of the experts, has continued
quietly to sell pianos.
"IN the old days," went on strenuously our friend, "merchants
shouted for cheaper, ever cheaper pianos, because cheap pianos,
they said, would appeal to the masses and would
Cheaper,
bring large profits to all concerned. As a matter
Erer
of fact, the cheaper the pianos became, in defer-
Cheaper
ence to this cry, the harder it became to sell them
at a fair profit, for competition constantly threatened to destroy
all remaining vestiges of the always small profit margin. When
the allure of the cheap piano began to fade before the brilliant
glitter of the cheap motor-car, merchants said that the piano was
dead, and they turned to phonographs and radio and whatever
else seemed likely to sell easily, taking again the line of least re-
sistance. Such merchants, of course, had and have a perfect right
to sell what they please, and the manufacturers of phonographs
and radio sets and what-not have a right to sell as many as they
can to as many merchants as they can secure to represent their
goods. That is all legitimate and proper. But then, these mer-
chants must not say that they are piano merchants. They must
not insist on the monopoly of this, that or the other make or makes
of piano, unless they are prepared to give to the manufacturers
of those pianos the support to which these manufacturers are en-
titled. The trouble, in fact, with the piano business is that the
piano merchants are not in the piano business. They are not
studying the social or musical position of the piano, they do not
care enough about it to want to take any trouble with it and a
good many of them have always been quite ready to throw the
piano overboard the moment the public interest in it should show
the slightest sign of fading into thin air. It has never occurred,
and never now occurs, to these men to think that perhaps after
all they are the parties responsible for maintaining public interest
in the piano. Perhaps such a thought would be too high-brow.
So long as the public comes in and buys, all is well. But when
the public is trying desperately to discover whether a piano can
he managed along with all the other things which the home needs
—things not dreamed of twenty years ago but to-day considered
to. be necessities of life—do these merchants move aggressively
to the attack? Ask yourself the question. Do they?"
{Continued on page 11)
THE man whose opinions are set forth here prefers to remain un-
known. Suffice it to say that his name, if it were revealed, would
at once carry conviction, if only because his sales
A
record has for years been a part of trade history.
Man's
1
He has always sold very high-grade pianos, but
I, Talk
at the same time he has sold pianos of every
••other grade. His annual sales figures run to surprising amounts
and still display the same, almost monotonously regular, six figures.
What this man thinks about piana retailing is then worth hearing.
Perhaps his preference for anonymity will cease to be mysterious
when what he says has been set down. "What," he said astonish-
ingly and suddenly over a luncheon table the other day, "what the
devil do these merchants mean who say that they cannot sell
pianos? Talk with such men and find out what they are doing.
You will find in most cases that they are not selling pianos because
they are not selling pianos. That is not a weak attempt at being
funny. It is the simple truth. They are giving their time to selling
every other kind of musical merchandise, from radio and phono-
graphs all down the line to small goods, sheet music, records and
everything else. They are not selling pianos because they can only
give so many hours a day to selling work, and as the time is being
10