Classic Mode

Presto

Issue: 1922 1895

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PRESTO
November 18, 1922.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1922.
rate of any compilation, by government experts, within our knowl-
edge. And it shows, most of all, that prices were maintained at a bet-
ter ratio in 1921 than before in many years. It proves, also, that there
must be a shortage of instruments in the stores throughout the coun-
try at this time. This is something that has been realized, and the
present-time activities of the manufacturers are justified and will be
rewarded.
A surprising disclosure of the comparative figures for 1919 and
1921, is that in the former year the number of playerpianos in excess
of straight pianos over 1921 was only 2,650, the number of reproduc-
ing pianos, given at 5.209, making a total excess of players over the
straight pianos of 7,059. The figures show, too, a remarkable devel-
opment of the most expensive type of instruments—the reproduc-
ing pianos. But the most significant item is that, whereas both
straight pianos and players show a falling off in numbers in 1921,
as compared with 1919, the grands increased a trifle—just 163 in-
struments, to be exact; Thus, with a drop of 32.5 per cent in straight
pianos in 1921, and of 35.4 per cent in players, the manufacture of
grands showed a slight growth in numbers.
If that means anything, it is, of course, that the grand piano is
to be reckoned with as a very large factor in the retail trade of
next year. And the fact that we now have several exclusive grand
industries, and the experiment of exclusive grand retail stores, is
equally significant.
Altogether the present year will make a much better showing
than the last, and the coming twelve months and beyond promises
to develop an activity not known since the great days before the war.
The pianos that are well promoted, and the dealers who recognise the
situation, and their opportunities, are in for a period of prosperity
in proportion to their activities.
PRESTO CORRESPONDENCE
PIANO PUBLICITY
IT IS NOT CUSTOMARY WITH THIS PAPER TO PUBLISH REGU-
LAR CORRESPONDENCE FROM ANY POINTS. WE, HOWEVER,
HAVE RESIDENT REPRESENTATIVES IN NEW YORK, BOSTON,
SAN FRANCISCO, PORTLAND, CINCINNATI, INDIANAPOLIS, MIL-
WAUKEE AND OTHER LEADING MUSIC TRADE CENTERS, WHO
KEEP THIS PAPER INFORMED OF TRADE EVENTS AS THEY HAP-
PEN. AND PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE REAL NEWS
OF THE TRADE FROM WHATEVER SOURCES ANYWHERE AND
MATTER FROM SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS, IF USED, WILL BE
PAID FOR AT SPACE RATES. USUALLY PIANO MERCHANTS OR
SALESMEN IN THE SMALLER CITIES, ARE THE BEST OCCA-
SIONAL CORRESPONDENTS, AND THEIR ASSISTANCE IS INVITED.
But for the enthusiasm of the retail dealers and their salesmen,
there would be comparatively few pianos sold at a profit. The piano
is an article the demand for which is very largely forced. It is, like
life insurance, one of the most useful of investments. But also like
life insurance, its need is not realized until possession overcomes
neglect, indifference or lack of understanding.
The piano is one of the most essential of all things in the home
of intelligence. That it is a part of the equipment of refinement is
a statement altogether superfluous. That point is obvious. And yet
the average head of the average family doesn't know that a piano is
wanted until his attention is drawn to the fact by some ambitious
piano dealer or his salesman.
Any active piano merchant will, we believe, indorse what has
been said. And, this being true, notwithstanding, the piano is one
of the most difficult things to advertise to advantage—we mean the
average piano. There are a few r pianos—a very few—whose stand-
ing with the public is such that their mere names suggest just what
the names stand for—music and beauty, and absolute excellence. But
the majority of pianos must be assiduously promoted, locally, by the
dealers and their salesmen. It is this that makes a loyal represen-
tative in any city of great value to the individual manufacturer.
The men who wear out their shoes, and often the seat of their
pants, in the work of impressing the absolute need of pianos by the
people—and of some particular pianos, especially—are the mission-
aries. They are the hard-working men who earn their wages by
doing a real good in their communities.
No printed page of fifty million circulation—if there could be
such a publication—could do the good for the average piano that a
thousand hard-working dealers and their salesmen can do—and often
do for individual makes of pianos. The style of competition which
holds good in the piano trade, can and does kill the best printed ad-
vertising" of "broadcast" kind that the most shrewd word-twister
can produce.
The earnest statement in opposition to the "best, in the world" of
the magazine advertisement, can divert the prospects from the ad-
vertised instrument to the least known and. perhaps, far less repre-
sentative instrument. For the piano is still, after all, an unknown
quantity to the citizens of the town. They buy because the dealer
advises them to buy. And they buy the piano the local dealer strongly
recommends. And in what terms the enthusiastic salesman "com-
mends" his piano is known to all manufacturers who watch their dis-
tributing departments.
If the public could be made to pause and consider that the Bolo
piano recommended by the local dealer as the "greatest on earth"
is not the only "best bet," the case might be different. But, in about
forty cases in every hundred, the retail piano buyer cannot even tell
The American Music Trade Weekly
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
Editors
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
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, 1896, at 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 United States possessions, 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 1 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.
Photographs of general trade interest are always welcome, and when used, If of
special concern, a charge will be made to cover cost of the engravings.
Rates for advertising in Presto Tear 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 Dastern and west-
ern hemispheres.
Presto Buyers' Guide is the only reliable index to the American Piano* and
Player-Pianos, it analyzes all instruments, classifies them, gives accurate estimate!
of their value and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Items of news and other matter of general interest to the music trades are ln-
rited and when accepted will be paid for. All communications should be addressed to
Presto Publishing Co., 407 So. Dearborn Street. Chicago, III.
ADVERTISING INFORMATION
Forms close promptly at noon every Thursday. News matter for
publication should be in not later than eleven o'clock on the same
day. Advertising copy should be in hand before Tuesday, five p. m.,
to insure preferred position. Full page display copy should be in
hand by Monday noon preceding publication day. Want advs. for cur-
rent week, to insure classification, must be at office of publication not
later than Wednesday noon.
THE PIANO CENSUS
Last week's Presto published the latest census figures in the
piano industry. And the tables must have been interesting to all in
the trade. They must, also, have aroused some curiosity as to accu-
racy of statement, contrasted with the understanding of experienced
piano men, concerning statistics in their own line of work.
It is not to be expected that the compilers of data pertaining to
special lines of industry can be wholly accurate. But the latest of-
ficial reports are much nearer correct than has been customary. In
the piano business there are merchants who, either by association or
design, pose as manufacturers, whereas they have never made a piano
or invested in anything short of the completed instrument. In the
reports as published, whatever inaccuracies there may be are due to
the condition alluded to. The census report says: "Of the 185 estab-
lishments reported in 1921, 78 were located in New York; 35 in Illi-
nois ; 14 in Massachusetts; 9 in Ohio; 8 in Wisconsin; 7 each in Indi-
ana, Michigan and Pennsylvania; 6 in New Jersey; 5 in Connecticut;
3 in Maryland; 2 each in Kentucky and Minnesota; one each in Cali-
fornia and Iowa. New York, the leading state in the industry, in 1921
produced 40.7 per cent of the total value of products in that year."
That, of course, has to do with pianos, and not the music indus-
tries generally. It also suggests that there may be a discrepancy in
the final totals as pertains to output and values. There are, to illus-
trate, not eight piano industries in Ohio; we can find but 5. In Wis-
consin there are not eight piano industries; we have a record of six.
But on the whole the 1921 piano census is the nearest to being accu-
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
November 18, 1922.
the name of his piano after he has bought it, even if it happens to be
one of the "broadcasted" kind, unless it is one of the rare old timers
which have also had the strenuous efforts of the trade through a half-
century or so.
All advertising is good advertising if it tells the truth. All ad-
vertising of local kind will sell pianos and is doing it every day. Broad-
cast advertising may be made good by an adequate investment per-
sisted in year after year. But the "tricks of the trade" in the piano
business are such that the broadcast advertising may be turned
against the piano advertised unless it is one with representatives so
thoroughly distributed and so loyal, as to insure co-operation through-
out the entire advertised field.
If the piano advertised has' some very distinctive claim, the case
may be different. A good illustration is the "nationally advertised"
Gulbransen. The purpose of the broadcast advertising was based
upon the fixed price—something almost unique, coupled with the char-
acter of the instruments and a featured trade-mark. Advertising with
no feature by which to make a dent upon the public mind, beyond
the fact that it is a piano, must face a long and very expensive cam-
paign before the prejudice of competing retailers and the tireless
opposition of rival salesmen, can insure a return from the investment.
It is this that makes the trade paper advertising profitable. The
trade paper, read by the active dealers and their salesmen, finds the
local influences without which no piano can win. And the trade pa-
per goes beyond the printed adv. and tells the dealers not only how to
buy, but also how to sell the instruments of which they read in the
trade papers.
A WARNING
In the Sheet Music Department of Presto, this week, there is an
article which has in it the possibilities of money saving and avoidance
of disappointment and discouragement by a large class of earnest
music-lovers. It is the article by Mr. T. Rogers Lyons who for a long-
time conducted the Sheet Music columns of Presto and who is still
a forceful contributor.
We know of no other writer who has given so much thought to
the music publishing business, and especially to the correcting of the
false pretense phases of that business, as Mr. Lyons. Years ago,
when the "song wanted" fake first began to grow into proportions,
Mr. Lyons took hold of the deception and so thoroughly exposed its
inner workings that, as a result, a number of the perpetrators of
the schemes were suppressed.
Today the "song wanted" and "poems wanted" enterprises are
more numerous than before and Mr. Lyons has again taken a broad
glance at the workings of the schemes and has been applying correc-
tive measures. His article this week is the most decisive that has yet
appeared. It answers scores of inquirers who have written to Presto
asking for advice. Only last week a correspondent told of his expe-
riences. What he said precisely coincides with Mr. Lyons' precau-
tion and this week's warning is so forceful that no reader of this paper
need be misled, or have any misunderstanding on the subject.
This week, also, in the Sheet Music Department, is a letter from
another song writer who thinks he has been victimized. His story is
identical with scores which have come to Presto's sheet music editor.
The warnings which were sounded years ago by Mr. Lyons were,
for a time, productive of results. They put a quietus upon the activ-
ities of several very dangerous schemers, in the East. But in the
meantime other "song wanted" frauds have sprung up and given to
all of the enterprises of that kind, good and bad alike, the color of
fraud.
The business of song publishing has improved some during the
past year. The class of publishers has become better and the rule
of a sort of monopoly has, in a measure, been broken. There are
independent publishers whose offerings are meeting with encourage-
ment because they are worthy of success and not dependent alto-
gether upon the vodeville stage and the loud-voiced yawpers of the
department store counters, placed there by the publishers to sing
whatever the crowds may applaud and sell anything they like, irre-
spective of the faint semblance of printed sheet to the noises made
by the singers.
In other words, there are signs that the business of sheet music
publishing may return again to the respectable place it once occupied
in the trade and musical world. But until then the warning sounded
again this week by Mr. Lyons is something all ambitious song
writers and poetasters may well pay heed to.
The value of a piano's name is admitted. All retail piano dealers,
and all salesmen know the pianos they sell. They may not know
much about the other pianos. To every piano salesman there is a
value in the piano names they see in the trade papers. Other pianos,
the names of which they do not see in their trade papers are as un-
known to them as if they had never existed. There are exceptions,
but this is the rule. It pays any dealer to sell pianos that are adver-
tised in the trade papers. Presto's "Where Doubts Are Dispelled"
alone bears witness to this fact.
* * *
Can there be too much music? A very intelligent and successful
piano merchant says there can be, and that the signs arc that there is
too much, even now, for the good of the trade. He believes that the
people who should buy pianos may be "fed up" with music to such an
extent that the piano at home may lose its savor and be neglected—
where it should do the greatest good. It is a case of "too much of a
good thing." While we do not altogether agree with the piano mer-
chant, in a sense there is reason in what he says.
'r*
*p
***
The latest in piano selling is a sliding installment scale upwards,
the customer paying a dollar or more down and increasing every
month by only fifty cents until the first year has passed, and continu-
ing at the last month's rate until the instrument is paid for in full.
The first payment so often influences the sale that the plan is fa-
vored, often, though we are not necessarily recommending it—only
telling about it.
* * *
The live piano dealers are the best possible advertisers of pianos
to the public. They are as vitally interested in the instruments they
sell locally as are the manufacturers themselves in a broader sense.
And the dealers have no good reason for working hard to advertise
pianos the makers of which are not sufficiently enterprising to adver-
tise their own products.
TRADE SHOWS STRONG
FAVOR FOR POOLE GRANDS
perienced order getter in many a day. Mr. Fabyan
is expected at headquarters this week, but will not
remain long there. Like Mr. Poole, he will set out
to achieve more sales triumphs.
MUNZ SIGNS UP AS
EXCLUSIVE KNABE ARTIST
Ava W. Poole, President of Poole Piano Co., Boston,
Pleased at Factory Conditions.
NEW PORTLAND, ORE., STORE.
Famous Young Pianist Associated with the Ampico,
for Which He Has Recorded.
Ava W. Poole, president of the Poole Piano Co.,
Boston, is preparing to set out on another trip, al-
though he has only just returned from a long and
successful one seeing the trade of the Middle West.
The orders taken by Mr. Poole in his recent trip no
doubt accounted for a considerable part of the activ-
ity visible in all departments of the Poole Piano
Co.'s factory at Landsdowne and Auburn streets,
Cambridge.
Mr. Poole is particularly proud of the interest of
the dealers in the Poole grands, which of course re-
flects the favor for the instrument by their discrim-
inative customers.
The grand department in the
Poole factory is ope of the busiest. But all depart-
ments show a cheering state of activity. For the past
month overtime has been a common occurrence in
the factory.
Dan Fabyan, traveler for the Poole Piano Co., is
winding up a trip which the officials of the company
say has been the most successful fall trip of the ex-
L. A. Willard, associated with Bert Guisness, has
opened a new music store at 354 Yamhill street,
Portland, Ore., which they have named "The Music
Shop." Mr. Willard is well known to the trade, hav-
ing been with the Lipman, Wolfe & Co. in the piano
department for the past seven years. They will carry
the Starr Piano Co. line of pianos, Sonora phono-
graph, Gennett records and Columbia records, sheet
music, small goods, and have established a record
exchange.
ASKS FOR DISSOLUTION.
Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Nichols, in Al-
bany, N. Y., last week signed an order naming Wil-
liam Hawver temporary receiver for Riders Music
Stores, Inc., 530 Warren street, Hudson, N. Y. The
company had applied to the court for voluntary dis-
solution stating that it was insolvent. John J. Moy
was appointed referee and announced a hearing on
the matter on November 25.
Mieczyslaw Munz, a young pianist who made the
most brilliant American debut reported so far this
season by the New York daily press, is an exclusive
Knabe and Ampico artist. Not only were the critics
superlatively enthusiastic over this newcomer, but in
some cases particular mention was made of the tone
of the Knabe which he was playing.
Mr. Munz made his actual American debut on Oc-
tober 5 at a private recital in the Ampico Studios,
New York. His first public hearing, however, took
place on October 20th in Aeolian Hall, when the
auditorium was genuinely crowded with experts and
enthusiasts who were aware of the young Polish pian-
ist's European reputation.
Mr. Munz has already made several brilliant re-
cordings for the Ampico. He will also be available
for a limited number of Ampico comparison concerts.
Orion Nobles has returned to the sales force of the
Thearle Music Co., San Diego, Calif.
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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