Presto

PRESTO
TAKE A VACATION
WITH PAY THIS TIME
How Others in the Piano Trade Had an Ener-
getic Old Time Selling the Instruments
May Prove a Suggestion for
You.
In summer the piano salesman and too often the
dealer is influenced by the common state of the sum-
mer mind. "Yes, we have no piano business/' seems
to be an accepted fact. But not all the people in the
piano business share that condition of mind. And
while some may not close the actual sales during the
summer season they know they are sowing the seeds
of profits. A letter from a dealer in a small Iowa
town received this week shows he possesses an alert
mind and an active body. He is sowing the seeds
of piano sales in a very effective way.
This energetic dealer is making a personal canvass
of every family in Kossuth County. He may not
meet them all, but he will meet and talk piano and
playerpiano to a great number of prospects in a wide
radius. With his Ford and a Bowen loader carrying
a model of the player he represents he started out
June 4 on the most enjoyable vacation he has ever
experienced.
Seeing An Opportunity.
Hampton Edwards, as a regular job sells pianos
and players on the outside for a Charleston, S. C,
music house, but when he visited a friend in Mul-
lins, in Marion county early last May, the thought of
sales was farthest from a mind keen for vacation
joys. Nearly everybody in Mullins buys or sells
tobacco and that his friend was interested in the
weed in a commercial way is not surprising. His
business called for an automobile trip through the
tobacco growing section in the southwest corner of
the county, and he invited Mr. Edwards to accom-
pany him.
At Staley Ford one night a cure-all medicine man
was giving a ballyhoo that made his colored listeners
dread the "misery" that so frequently afflicted them.
Their response was spirited buying of large bottles
of the potent "misery" medicine. Then when every
customer seemed to be served the doctor played a
jazzily joyous tune on a folding organ as accompani-
ment to singing by a colored quartet.
But Mr. Edwards noticed that neither the misery
medicine, the medicine man. nor the colored warblers
compared with the little folding organ as an attrac-
tion. A particularly eager medicine buyer offered to
buy the organ, but it wasn't for sale. It was a hand-
some model from the line of the A. L. White Mfg.
Co., Chicago, and familiar to the piano salesman from
Charleston.
How Mr. Edwards prolonged his vacation and
made the vacational joys those of selling for cash
White folding organs by the carload to eager col-
ored customers is a story he will tell in detail some
day. It was a most enjoyable experience and a
highly profitable one.
Another Summer Story.
A certain dealer in a populous middle-west state
never fails to visit Presto office in his visits to Chi-
cago. A visit from him this week was a reminder of
certain incidents in his life when he was not as heal-
thy physically or financially as he is today. Some
years ago while building up a piano business, he got
run down physically from trying to do the work of
three men and a team of mules. The doctor called
his case something in Latin and called down the
dealer something fierce. Unless the piano man took
a short rest in a quiet place, all the doctor could
promise was requiescat in pace.
So every day his wife shooed him to the vine em-
bowered summer house in the grassy yard at the
back of the house. She was a capable woman who
effectively doubled up on the housekeeping and the
storekeeping. All the husband had to do was to sit
still, read something light and pleasant, eat and drink
according to schedule and generally help nature do
a job of tuning on his nerves and repairing on his
action generally.
Oh, His Poor Nerves.
Unfortunately, his course began simultaneously
with the dismissal of school for the summer vaca-
tion. He had two boys of high school age. It was
their very noisy habit to foregather with other boys
on the backyard fences of their own and neighboring
yards, where they beguiled the time between base-
ball with tuneless choruses and other vocal expres-
sions of their boyish normality. The boys were
considerate enough—when they remembered. But it
soon became clear to the dealer's wife that while the
boy band roved free about the little town the quiet
so necessary for the patient's upbuild was impossible.
It was then that the good lady had an inspira-
tion. She organized her own boys and their six com-
panions into a census-taking force. She took a map
of the county and marked off its territory within a
radius of twenty miles of the town into eight sec-
tions. One was allotted to each boy, who was to
cover it on his bicycle during the vacation. The boys
were to visit each family along the roads, finding out
whether a piano or organ was owned, what make,
how old, whether the purchase of a new instrument
was contemplated, was the family musical, what
other instruments were played, and so forth. The
answers were set down on a printed card which Mrs.
Dealer had prepared.
Boys Acted Right.
The boys were delighted with their jobs. Every
day they started at sun-up. When working in the
remote territory they did not return for days at a
time. The back yard was a heaven for quiet.
Father's jaded nerves and rebellious stomach got
back their tone. When the doctor permitted him to
resume business he found his work cut out for him.
In a modern way the information gathered by the
boys was tabulated. By files of cards ingeniously ar-
ranged the dealer could see what families would be
interested in this, that and the other thing; what
schools or churches were possible customers for
piano or organ; what homes had growing youngsters;
in what family was a marriage possible and w T hen;
where an old piano could be taken out and a new one
put in and where to find customers for piano and or-
gans taken in trade. Other data, too. Who would
be interested in new playerpiano rolls, talking ma-
chines, records or sheet music, who were the music
teachers and who they taught, and so on.
Father Cured.
Vacation days were over. Mother sent the boys
back to school. Father took up the work in the store
under strict injunctions from the doctor to go slow.
There should be no more overwork and skipping of
meals; no more lengthening of the days by stealing
from the nights. Three outside salesmen were en-
gaged. With the information gathered and tabulated
there was economy of time in every day's work.
The subsequent expansion of this dealer's business
has been so remarkable that a big manufacturer has
given him wholesale rights in a large section of his
state. Three of the bicycle corps of census taking
boys are in the business. They are piano men of the
kind called crackerjack.
PROTESTING DRAFTS ABROAD.
The following trade information bulletins, pub-
lished by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Com-
merce, relate to the protesting of drafts abroad:
Trade Information Bulletin No. 112, discussing the
general aspects of the subject; No. 113, dealing with
South American countries; No. 114, covering Mexico
and Central America; No. 115, Cuba and other West
Indies; and No. 120, entitled "Protesting Drafts in
Australia and New Zealand." Bulletins dealing with
the protesting of drafts in other countries are in the
course of preparation.
W. B. MYERS RESIGNS.
Ray Rubottom, manager of the music department
of the W. B. Myers store, Mt. Vernon, 111., recently
resigned to become manager of the O'Connell Music
Store in Washington, Ind. He will have full charge
of the store, which is the largest of its kind in Wash-
ington.
July 28, 1923
JOHN W. STEVENS MAKES
COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS
Committees of New York Piano Manufacturers' As-
sociation Now Officially Recorded.
John W. Stevens, who was recently elected presi-
dent of the New York Piano Manufacturers' Associa-
tion has named the membership of the various com-
mittees, which are as follows:
Executive Committee: L. S. Roemer, H. B. Tre-
maine, W. C. Hepperla, M. C. Lorini.
Advisory Committee, made up of all the former
presidents.
Industrial Relations Committee: Executive Com-
mittee and Max J. DeRochcmont, Theodore Casse-
beer, Mark P. Campbell.
Production Committee: Executive Committee and
L. D. Perry, Louis H. Maier, Geo. F. Abendschein,
W. G. Heller, Charles H. Jacob.
Membership Committee: Herbert Simpsorr; Allan
Lane, A. W. Fitzgerald.
Auditing Committee: Charles Jacob, Gordon C.
Campbell and J. J. Glynn.
The new officers of the association, in addition to
the president, Mr. Stevens, are: Harry J. Sohmer,
first vice-president; Eugene Schmitt, second vice-
president, and Albert Behning, secretary and treas-
urer.
The Industrial Relations and Traffic Bureaus are
at 105 West 40th street, 'phone Pennsylvania 3977.
Walter Drew, counsel; E. M. Ruelbach, comrais-
HENRY FORD BUYS OLD
SEVEN-LEGGED SPINET
Also picks Up Other Antiques in Columbus, Ohio,
Shop.
Even an ordinary citizen cannot nose around Col-
umbus, Ohio, antique dealers' shops and spend scads
of real new money for alleged old musical instru-
ments and furniture without attention from the keen
boys of the city editors' staffs. So what chance of an
unobserved and undisturbed time had Henry Ford
last week when he essayed the role of antique hound
in the Ohio city?
According to the Columbus papers, he bought a
seven-legged spinet, some chests, chairs, two pianos,
other musical instruments, and some vases and
crocks. He spent the morning in the little shop, dis-
playing a wide knowledge of antiques.
When he left he frankly gave his name as Henry
Ford of Detroit, and said he wanted his purchases
shipped to the Wayside Inn he recently purchased in
the East and to his winter home at Fort Myers, Fla.
BUYS IN AUGUSTA, ME.
The C. E. Downing Co. has purchased the stock
and fixtures of the Maine Music Co., Augusta, Me.
Herbert A. Marston, paymaster of the Pine Tree
Pulp Co., of South Gardiner, will be associated with
Mr. Downing, who will be general manager. It is
the plan of Mr. Downing to expand the business,
adding new departments and enlarging the scope of
others.
SUCCESSFUL ILLINOIS DEALER
The Francis Piano Co., 4 Wein-
berg arcade, Galesburg, 111., is one
of the successful ones which cater
to the higher class of trade, which
is not surprising when the am-
bitions and personality of E. A.
Francis, the proprietor, is consid-
ered. Mr. Francis has been asso-
ciated with good pianos since his
first entry into the business and al-
ways has found it a labor of love-
to sell that kind.
Mr. Francis left the piano busi-
ness a few years ago, but he said
au revoir and not good-bye when
he did so. He entered enthusiasti-
cally into his new work, but friends
in the piano business who didn't
claim to be prophets but common,
everyday anticipators said he'd be
back. They were correct.
WAREROOM
Since opening up the warerooms in Galesburg he
has had wonderful success. He carries a fine line
of pianos, players, reproducing pianos and phono-
graphs. The accompanying picture shows a corner
of the main wareroom with a Packard Style Al bear-
ing the gladsome legend "Sold" in a prominent
position.
VIEW, E. A. FRANCIS PIANO CO.'S STORE.
Mr. Francis and Mrs. Francis also appear in the
picture, and the pleased look on the dealer's face is
also one of pride. The Packard which was used by
Galli Curci during her visit to the city had just been
sold for cash to a prominent railroad official a few
minutes before the photographer posed the group.
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