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THE PHOENIX
HAD
NOTHING
ON
By
S. LEWIS BREVIT
LEAVING BIS SHIPMENTS ON
THE SIDEWALK FOR A WHILE
PROVES GOOD ADVERTISING
W
HEN, a year and a half ago, the Peffer Music Co.,
40 South California street, Stockton, Cal., suffered
a disastrous fire that gutted the building, destroyed
most of the stock, and caused a dead loss that ran up into
the tens of thousands, E. F. Pefler received a lot of well-
meant sympathy from his acquaintances and business asso-
ciates to the tune of "It's too bad the fire put the firm out
of business."
That was late in June, 1929. Three months later, on Sep-
tember 28, Peffer reopened his rebuilt and enlarged store with
everything new in it except the clerks; long before Christmas
of that year the old los'ses had been wiped out and the firm
was away on the credit side of the ledger; today, a little over
a year later, the Pefler Music Co. is not only far the biggest
and most prosperous establishment of its kind in all of interior
California, but finished the year 1930 away ahead of any year
since the founding of the business in 1917, breaking all its
records for sales volume; during the first eleven months of
1930 sales exceeded the entire year of 1929, which year had
been the largest for sales volume; then the finishing month
of 1930 leaped ahead of not only every other previous Decem-
ber, but surpassed any month since the beginning of the
business.
The business methods responsible for such noteworthy suc-
cess are surely worthy of study, and-this brief article seeks
to summarize these methods.
"MUSIC HATH CHARMS 11 —BUT
It goes without saying that students of music are the best
customers—present and prospective—for the sale of musical
instruments. It is also a fact—a rather stern and sad fact,
but a fact nevertheless — that too many heads of families
throughout the country have decreed: "Times are hard; music
lessons for Johnny and Ethel are luxuries and will have to
wait until times are better."
Hence, the Peffer policy of suiting methods to present con-
ditions decreed that, without any "strings" of any kind what-
soever, music teachers be invited to come and occupy eleven
beautifully furnished and equipped two- and three-room
studios on the second floor of the rebuilt Peffer Building—
each studio rent free, light and heat free, and all required
studio equipment supplied without cost. Free use, too, of
the adjacent recital hall, on the same floor, equipped with a
small stage suitable for such affairs and with comfortable
chairs and hardwood floors.
On such terms it was not hard to convince music teachers
to move into the new Peffer studios. Also, it is not very
difficult to comprehend that the pupils of these teachers—
almost all of them—purchased and are purchasing Peffer
instruments, even though no such condition, expressed or
implied, is attached to the use of the studios.
NEWSVERTISINS, THE MODERN WAY
"Newsvertising"—to coin a new word—would best express
the idea behind the attention-commanding Peffer program of
once-a-week newspaper advertisements, almost invariably
occupying the entire back page of the first section of the
leading Stockton newspaper.
In fact, the permanent caption of these full-page advertise-
ments reads: "Peffer Music and Radio News." The page is
laid out in true front-page newspaper style. The eight-
column heads describe the leading offering for the current
week; smaller "news" items and the boxed "ads" vie with
each other in filling the page with the other current offerings.
The page arrangement, however, merely emphasizes the
fact that there is real news value in the advertisement—Mr.
Peffer sees to that. T o give a few examples:
When the Peffer store reopened after the fire the Sep-
tember 27 issue of the leading Stockton newspaper carried an
entire section devoted to Peffer and Peffer merchandise—a
twenty-page section which set an all-State record for Cali-
fornia.
THE M U S I C TRADE
REVIEW,
March, 1931