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The Music Trade Review
and every year, and that it can be abused, will
wear out and might burn up in a fire.
Also we must educate the present owners of
some eight million pianos that anything made
must wear out in time and persuade them to
trade in and junk 25% of pianos now in homes.
These old pianos are a menace to our trade.
They do more to destroy an appreciation of
piano tone than all the music teachers com-
bined can overcome. People listen to the "tin-
pan" tone of an old piano and before they
realize it their ideal of piano tone is measured
by the one they daily hear.
If all these old worn-out pianos could be
scrapped you would find that the public would
much more quickly appreciate a good piano.
One of the reasons for the big volume of sales
of a certain factory now defunct was not wholly
its price appeal, because thousands of this make
of piano were sold by unscrupulous dealers at
retail prices high enough to have given the
purchaser a good piano, but they were sold
because the public did not know piano tone.
From figures recently published by one of
the trade papers only 2% of pianos now in
homes are being traded in annually.
The National Federation of Woman's Clubs,
which alone covered 1,940,183 homes last year;
together with other sources considered reliable
we find that there are approximately eight mil-
lion pianos in American homes to-day.
In 1925 a survey showed that during the year
41.6% of sales made involved a trade-in, which
means that in that year 132,000 pianos were
exchanged.
According to the National Association of
Piano Tuners 80% of these pianos need tuning
and 25% need to be junked. Replacing them
at the rate of one hundred to one hundred and
thirty thousand per year does not show much
progress in getting these old pianos out of the
way.
To-day 40% of all homes have a piano which
leaves 60% to be supplied. Eliminate from the
60% a very substantial proportion of those
who for various reasons cannot purchase a new
piano and thus we see that the old piano is
one of the biggest problems confronting the
trade. Not its allowance price, although this is
serious, but the fact that the old piano is still
working and its present owner does not choose
to part with it. The replacement market repre-
sents over one-half of our possible sales and
must be developed.
Fortunately one of the best trade signs for
improvement lies in the fact that style has
entered the piano trade, and style is the great-
est developer of merchandising known today.
We are living in an age of style and beauty.
The "haircloth" sofa and the "family album"
have been relegated to the attic. The golden
oak piano of only a few years ago is now
"passe." The present vogue is the grand piano
which is increasing in sales volume with sur-
prising figures.
Manufacturer and dealers today must awake
to the fact that this is an age of beauty. The
public will trade their old pianos if the appeal
is made along this line. Beauty of tone and
beauty of appearance but "hokum" talking
points and price-appeal advertising will never
build piano sales volume.
This new vogue of style and beauty will rid
thousands of homes of unsightly, worn-out
pianos, and not only add a distinctive decora-
tive value to the home but add much in musi-
cal enjoyment because of a better quality of
tone.
My own company is one of the leading
manufacturers in America today in the art and
period grand game. It's all we make, and in a
period of less than eighteen months the Everett
Piano Co. has built a grand business of unpre-
cedented volume. The whole secret being the
building of a quality grand manufactured on a
scale that permits of a middle price range, and
then backing it up with a national advertising
program with the appeal to the present-day
trend of style and beauty.
AUGUST 25, 1928
Bush & Lane Promote
Group Piano Teaching
Educational Department Under Direction of
William Lincoln Bush, Announces National
Campaign Upon This Sales Method
HOLLAND, MICH., August IK.—A nation-wide
promotional campaign in behalf of group piano
instruction classes for retail piano dealers has
been launched by the Hush & Lane Piano Co.
of this city through its educational department
Godard Leases New
Quarters in Syracuse
SYRACUSE, N. Y., August 20.—The Godard
Music House, has taken a long-time lease of
the Duguid Building, 428 South Warren street,
this city, which will be occupied by the com-
pany after extensive alterations have been
made. The plans call for a most attractive
music store, together with a number of studios
for teachers, an artists' studio for the use of
visiting artists, and an auditorium where music
pupils can give recitals.
The new building comprises about 30,000
square feet of floor space and the music store
section will be opened on November 1, with the
studios and auditorium ready for occupancy in
the Spring.
The Staffnote Corp., Milwaukee. Wis., has
been incorporated to deal in pianos, organs, etc.
Reliable dealers who desire to make the most of the
steadily increasing popularity of the small upright are
invited to write for illustrations, specifications and other
interesting information about the exquisite little
Holland Upright
Only 48 Inches High
A big piano musically at a moderate price
Holland Piano Manufacturing Co.
Executive and Sales Headquarters
Metropolitan Bank Building, Minneapolis, Minn.
Factory and shipping point, Menomonie, Wie.
Chester L. Beach
under the direction of William Lincoln Hush.
The campaign, which incorporates the Cur-
tis System of group piano instruction, has been
devised as an aid to piano sales promotion, and
dealers who have already utilized the plan,
endorse it as one of the most effective and in-
expensive means of developing both piano sales
directly and indirectly.
Every traveling representative of the Bush
& Lane Piano Co. has been trained to aid piano
dealers in organizing, supervising and operating
group piano instruction classes either in the
dealer's warcrooms or some other adaptable
place.
William Lincoln Bush, founder of the famous
Bush Conservatory of Music, and one of the
originators of group piano instruction, who is
the director of the Bush & Lane educational
department, has made the Curtis System avail-
able to dealers and will co-operate to the full-
est extent with piano merchants in conducting
classes.
The entire campaign, however, is under the
direct supervision of Chester L. Beach, presi-
dent, treasurer and sales promotion manager
of the Bush & Lane Piano Co., who plans to
exploit the piano sales promotion plan through
trade paper and direct by mail advertising dur-
ing the next two months.
One of the commendable features of the
Bush & Lane plan is that it is equally effective
in both large cities, and the smaller towns.
The Reichardt Piano Co., for example, used it
with remarkable success in Chicago, and on
the other hand one dealer in a medium-sized
city, and another in a small town were just as
enthusiastic over the results they obtained.
Opens New Store
Vincent Costelli, has opened the Chester ave-
nue Music Store at 5509 Chester avenue, Phila-
delphia, handling radio and talking machines.