Classic Mode

Presto

Issue: 1920 1778

PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234. Private Phones to all De-
partments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 189fi. a t the Post Office, Chicago, Illinois,
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable in advance. No extra
charge in U. S. possessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico.
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., 407 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
Advertising Rates:—Five dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertions.
Complete schedule of rates for standing cards and special displays will be furnished
on request. The Presto does not sell its editorial space. Payment Is not accepted for
articles of descriptive character or other matter appearing in the news columns. Busi-
ness notices will be indicated by the word "advertisement" in accordance with the
Act of August 24, 1912.
Rates for advertising in Presto Year Book Issue and Export Supplements of
Presto will be made known upon application. Presto Year Book and Export issues
have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical in-
strument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely and
effectually all the houses handling musical instruments of both the Eastern and West-
ern hemispheres.
Presto Buyers' Guide is the only reliable index to the American Pianos and
Player-Pianos, it analyzes all instruments, classifies them, gives accurate estimates
of their value and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Items of news and other matter of general interest to the music trades are in-
vited and when accepted will be paid for. All communications should be addressed to
Presto Publishing Co., 407 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1920.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE NEWS OF THE
TRADE—ALL KINDS OF NEWS EXCEPT PERSONAL SLANDER
AND STORIES OF PETTY MISDEEDS BY INDIVIDUALS. PRESTO
WILL PRINT THE NAMES OF CORRESPONDENTS WHO SEND IN
"GOOD STUFF" OR ARE ON THE REGULAR STAFF. DON'T SEND
ANY PRETTY SKETCHES, LITERARY ARTICLES OR "PEN-PIC-
TURES." JUST PLAIN NEWS ABOUT THE TRADE—NOT ABOUT
CONCERTS OR AMATEUR MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS, BUT
ABOUT THE MEN WHO MAKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND
THOSE WHO SELL THEM. REPORTS OF NEW STORES AND
THE MEN WHO MAKE RECORDS AS SALESMEN ARE GOOD. OF-
TEN THE PIANO SALESMEN ARE THE BEST CORRESPONDENTS
BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE TO READ AND HAVE
THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FINDING OUT WHAT IS "DOING" IN
THE TRADE IN THEIR VICINITY. SEND IN THE N E W S -
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
BETTER ALL THE TIME
Doesn't it seem almost impossible that there was a time when the
dignified men of the piano industry deemed it necessary to publish a
book telling of the lack of ethics in the trade, and urging their fellow
manufacturers to employ better methods in their business? If we
take out that book today and read the serious, almost alarming ar-
raignment of the industry, as well as of the retail trade, we seem to
be linking the musical instrument business with the things of the
dark ages.
The chapter on stencils and stenciling reads very much as if the
piano industry was, at that remote time, in control of a lot of trick-
sters and scamps without conscience. The custom of appropriating
other men's good names seemed common, and the habit of selling
cheap instruments under names suggestive of artistic pianos seemed
the regular thing. And a glance at the chapter concerning the retail
trade suggests that in those days it was regarded as a sign of intense
energy and shrewdness to drag a competitor's employee away from
his work and into the service of his rival. No consideration was, ap-
parently, given to the rights of contemporaries, and every man was
seemingly plugging along with no regard for the well being of his
neighbor. Even patrolling the sidewalks in front of competitors'
stores, in watch for chance customers, was not regarded as con-
temptible. The methods of what was once termed the Baxter street
cheap clothes business were applied to the sale of pianos, and the only
thought seems to have been to capture the sale, much as the bolshe-
viki overrun their victims in Russia.
Those were gay old times in the piano business. The book put
forth by the piano association at that time deals in such minutiae as
today would not be possible. And nothing could more graphically
picture the change that has come over the industry and trade. Some
of the piano men who compiled the literature of the associations in
the day to which we have been looking back, are still engaged in the
industry, as energetically as ever. To their minds the betterment
must be as clear as it is satisfactory. They must recognize that the
August 21, 1920.
seed they planted, more than a quarter century ago, has sprouted and
taken root. And they realize that the industry and trade are getting
better and better every year. It is no longer a matter of trickery to
sell pianos. It is no longer a business in which jealousy, suspicion and
bad feeling exist. It is as nearly a business of brotherhood and good
will today as any other line of manufacture and merchandising.
And what has brought about the difference? Without doubt the
progress of the music trade associations has been keeping the develop-
ment of the industry and trade within the limits of the kind of better-
ment which the very name of music suggests, but which music, as a
business, for many years did not present. And the manufacturer and
retailer in the business who may still persist in any of the old time
semi-disreputable methods is not, as upon investigation you will find,
a member of any of the trade associations.
EVERY WEEK
Everything and anything that stimulates interest in the things
we are interested in is a good thing. The Player Week, to which a
good many piano manufacturers are contributing liberally, is one of
the good things, of course. It will become contagious in the retail
trade, and the enthusiasm of the men who make player-pianos will
stimulate the men who sell them at retail. And so a good deal of
special business will be done. It is along the line that Mr. Tremaine's
music bureau works, through artistic inspiration, to cause the more
material things in music to bound ahead.
Every week is, of course, player week. Individual industries have
set aside special weeks for the special promotion of their instruments,
by the dealers who represent them throughout the country. And the
result has been good. One of the big concerns which has tried the
plan thoroughly, is. the Gulbransen-Dickinson Company of Chicago.
Perhaps that ambitious industry called it the Gulbransen Week. Of
that we don't just now recall. But it seems to us a good idea for the
player-piano manufacturers to apply their special player week ener-
gies to their own individual names. That is, after the present general
player week push of the association has set the pace and started the
idea in a general way.
A player week devoted to any individual instrument might easily
be made a powerful advertising influence. Every dealer and his sales-
men who push the player would put special effort into the work. The
industry would supply the printed ammunition. The descriptive cir-
culars, catalogues, flyers and other material would be liberally dis-
tributed. And the individual industry would employ all of its trade
paper space, and a lot of extra space, also, for purposes of its
player week. It would certainly be an enterprise productive of large
results.
The only possible detriment to the success of the individual in-
dustry player week, would be the conflict in the dates which sev-
eral manufacturers might select for their special enterprise. But that
could easily be obviated, for it is no longer customary, in the piano
industry, for one concern to deliberately try to block the way of
another. By an understanding, the weeks of the different industries
might be so arranged as to have no conflict. .Even were two, or even
three industries, to select the same week, the results would not be
hurtful; in fact, in a sense the same results would be obtained as the
player week now planned for October next. The suggestion is well
worth consideration, and perhaps after the week in October the indi-
vidual manufacturers will be enabled to judge pretty accurately as to
what is the better way to work it, and what the probable results
may be.
Every week is player week. But so is every week "go-to-meet-
in' " week, and picnic week, and golf week, and all-other-things week.
Nevertheless, we like to fix upon some special week for our parties,
our tournaments, and our social celebrations. So with business in
general, and with player-piano weeks in particular. Anything that
stimulates business is worth while. And player week may easily be
made a particularly worth while event, just as the week in October
will be.
GENERIC
NAMES
It seems strange that the public—the intelligent public that buys
pianos—can't learn that certain widely advertised names in the music
trade are not generic in their application. There are several names
of individual industries, and their instruments, which have so grown
in upon the misunderstanding of the world as to pass as the generic
names of everything associated with the species to which those spe-
cial products belong. Of such names perhaps the most conspicuous,
in the sense to which we refer, are "'Pianola" and "Victrola."
When The Aeolian Company adopted the trade name "Pianola,"
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/
PRESTO
August 21, 1920.
that instrument was one of the few thus far prominent in the trade.
The name was more largely advertised than any other. Of course it
was a good instrument, so that all the requisites to distinction were
represented in its promotion And soon the music-loving world was
calling for the Pianola. Other players came in, bearing equally good
names. Many of them also, applied the terminal "ola," until the own-
ers of the name "Pianola" made an attempt in law to estop its use.
"Ola" became a byword and a joke in the trade, and that only helped
to spread public familiarity with the name.
After awhile, along came the "Victrola." It had the same experi-
ence as the "Pianola." The world gradually came to recognize all
phonographs as "Victrolas." A few—a very few, thank heaven—of
the newer talking machine makers encouraged the mild deception by
permitting their representatives to refer to their machines as "vic-
trolas" tut qualifying the term by adding, as a prefix, the maker's
names. Thus it might have been the "Jones Victrola" or the "Sque-
dunk Victrola," or anything else by which the public might be led,
by the association of names, to think that all phonographs were "vic-
trolas," which, of course, in»the basic sense, they are.
And so the names owned by individual instruments gradually
grew into the misunderstanding of the public until the manufacturers
of the origirials became annoyed and their trade suffered by it. It is
on record that a popular trade export publication in Spanish appeared
in which the word "pianola," was employed in a generic sense,
throughout the entire book. And upon investigation it was disclosed
that in the South American countries no other word was known in
connection with the player-piano. In other words, the Spanish speak-
ing people had adopted the word "pianola" as the generic definition
of the American descriptive term.
But it is still more strange that, in the United States, there are
still many small piano dealers who seem to be ignorant of the true
meaning of the trade names which have been used in this article to
illustrate the subject. In the local advertising of those dealers the
word "pianola" is still used in a generic sense; and the word "vic-
trola" is similarly employed. We have seen the term "Kimball Vic-
trola" used in several instances, and no doubt other well-known piano
names have been similarly coupled with the talking machine made
famous by "his master's voice." The world sometimes learns slowly.
And even the wide awake piano merchants sometimes do not learn
any too quickly.
NO LOWER PRICES
There seems to be a strong argument in what Mr. Mark Camp-
bell, of the Brambach Piano Co., has to say in his letter to the trade
which is reproduced in this paper this week. Everywhere the big
department stores are large advertisers. They exert a distinct influ-
ence upon the mind of the buying public, and the average person
seldom stops to think back of the printed figures consequently when
the department store secures a "bargain" in some minor article and
TO DEVELOP EXPORT
TRADE IN MUSIC GOODS
Commercial Conditions Abroad Engage Ad-
visory Committee of the Music Indus-
tries Chamber of Commerce.
Since assuming his duties August 1, A. M. Law-
rence, manager of the newly created Export Bureau
of the Music Industries Chamber of Commerce, has
been busy making plans for the development of
the Bureau's work.
It is expected that shortly communications will
be sent to all manufacturers in the industry making
products of a type which may be sold abroad, ex-
plaining in detail the purpose of the Export Bureau
and which the Chamber will keep on tile in order
intelligently to co-operate in the development of the
music export trade.
Arrangements are also being made to gather and
keep up to date a complete file of foreign tariffs
and various regulations affecting the importation of
musical instruments.
, Mr. Lawrence already has had conferences with
officials of the Chamber of Commerce of the United
States, the National Association of Manufacturers,
the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce,
five of the big banks doing extensive foreign busi-
ness, the National Association of Credit Men and
other associations in a position to co-operate, par-
ticularly by supplying information concerning pos-
"plays up" that article in big type, in the local newspapers, the public
concludes that prices are tumbling and that the H. C. of L. is on the
run.
What Mr. Campbell says was illustrated in the Chicago news-
papers last Sunday. A department store had secured a large quantity
of shoes, bearing the manufacturer's name which is a name widely
known because largely advertised. The shoes, no doubt, were good
ones, and why they were sacrificed only shoe men can tell. Probably
they were back numbers with respect to style. Perhaps the toes were
too sharply pointed, or vice versa, or they may have been an overstock
hard for the traveling salesmen to "unload." In any event, the public
probably bought eagerly and concluded that shoes had been subject
to "profiteering."
So with other things of relatively small cost and quick produc-
tion—the so-called essentials. The bargain counters are heavy adver-
tisers, and the newspaper type, if big enough, leaves the very impres-
sion the manufacturers feel is hurtful, and upon which the financial
men look with something like alarm. Whatever the cut prices may
mean, as a rule they are not the result of normal, healthy processes
in business. What Mr. Campbell says is absolutely right. It has been
said over and over again in this paper.
Authorities for the statements that piano prices can not come
down have been given. The reasons why piano prices may go still
higher have also been given. Dealers themselves are the ones who
are often most misled. Dealers from distant cities have called at
Presto offices and given expression to the very thought to which Mr.
Campbell draws attention. They have declared that in their opinion
prices will soon drop, and for that reason they would not place orders
for future shipments, contenting themselves with buying as small as
possible for present purposes. A prominent gentleman from Australia
recently made that statement, as did also another from Scotland. So
it is clear that what Mr. Campbell says is based upon actual condi-
tions.
It is equally clear that the proposition of his company to insure
the dealers against any possibility of loss, in the event of a drop this
year, is equally an adroit move. It seems to be just what many deal-
ers have been waiting for. And it at once proves with what confi-
dence the Brambach Piano Co. regards as almost certain a still
further increase in cost of production.
There can be no drop in piano prices for a long time to come.
All the evidence is against it. But there are also evidences enough
in the abounding harvests that trade will be good—that the dealers
will need more instruments than they can get the coming fall and
winter. Therefore the dealer who places his orders early will later
prove to be the one who can deliver to his customers, and make the
profit without which no business can prosper.
Read what Mr. Campbell has to say, read it more than once, and
profit by it, by applying what is said to your own source of supplies.
For the manufacturers generally will agree in the proposition as Mr.
Campbell puts it.
sible foreign agents, commercial conditions abroad
and transportation conditions.
The most- important task immediately before the
Export Bureau is the complication of a complete
list of importers and dealers in foreign countries
handling or in a position to handle musical instru-
ments of all kinds, with information concerning their
past experience in importing both American and
European instruments, foreign credits, and other
essential information.
The Advisory Committee of the Export Bureau
will be appointed shortly, and its first task will be
that of considering the plan of an export campaign,
and a recommendation to the Directors of the
Chamber of a definite policy with respect to de-
veloping the export business of the industry.
WHOLE DEPARTMENT TRAVELS.
"Be careful of your party.'' admonished the gen-
eral manager of the May department store, Cleve-
land, Ohio, addressing the piano department man-
ager of the store, who was starting for Chicago
with the entire piano sales force, including his tun-
er, Mr. Mack. "For if anything serious should hap-
pen to your party we would be minus a sales force
in your department." The general manager saw
them all on board a train on Saturday. It was
possible for all to leave at once for the two days'
trip, owing to the custom of the house to keep
closed all day Mondays during the hot weather.
The party of Cleveland piano men and women visit-
ed various piano factories in Chicago on Monday,
greatly to their delight and instruction.
SHIPS ATWOOD LOADER
TO MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
Best Acknowledgement of the Merits of Device Is in
Great Number of Re-orders.
Last week the Atwood Piano Loader Co., Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, shipped an Atwood Loader to E.
Wyatt Warren, Melbourne, Australia. It is another
mark of appreciation for this most desirable aid
to piano deliveries. Other Atwood Loaders have
been shipped to the country named before this and
it is a matter of pride to the Atwood Piano Loader
Co., that dealers in every country where there are.
progressive piano men, know and admit the valu-
able services of the device.
Merit plus wise and generous advertising make
sales for the Atwood Loader. The now well-known
cut of the company showing a piano loader on an
automobile is an argument to the eye of the dealer.
It is an obvious statement of purposes. But the
company is free in the .circulation of testimonials
of piano dealers from every state in the Union and
from many places abroad, in which the irrefutable
fact of the loader's services to sales are plainly
stated.
NOW A. B. CHASE AGENTS.
N. J. Hahne & Co., Newark. X. J.; the Clyde
Music Co., Clyde, O.. and H. G. Perry, Canajohara,
N. Y., have recently been appointed representatives
of the A. B. Chase Piano Co., Inc., New York.
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/

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