Presto

PRESTO
presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT -
- Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial 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. Rates for advertising on
application.
Items of news and other matter are solicited and if
of general interest to the music trade will be paid for
at space rates. Usually piano merchants or salesmen
in the smaller cities are the best occasional corre--
spondents, and their assistance is invited.
Forms close at noon every Thursday. News mat-
ter 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 current
week, to insure classification, must not be later than
Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1923.
407 TO 417.
The offices of Presto Publishing Co. have been re-
moved just one door south of former location on
South Dearborn street, Chicago, The new number
is 417 South Dearborn street, and only change of the
0 to 1 is required to have it correct. Presto has been
within fifty feet of its present location for nearly
thirty-five years. In its new and larger quarters it
will be better than ever equipped to meet the require-
ments of a steadily increasing business. Remember
to change your records to—
PRESTO PUBLISHING CO.,
417 South Dearborn Street, Chicago.
A GREAT INDUSTRY
What would any of the early day piano man-
ufacturers have said had they been told that
within a half-century, from the time of their
activities there would be individual factories
turning- out approximately one hundred com-
pleted instruments a day? They would have
laughed incredulously and said that the possi-
bilities of so great productiveness would not
be attained in a hundred years or more.
In the latter seventies an eastern piano in-
dustry startled the trade by announcing that
its output had so greatly grown that the an-
nual productiveness approached 5,000 instru-
ments a year—or the year in which the al-
most incredible claim was made. Five thou-
sand pianos from a single industry seemed at
that time something like a fairy tale. But
to dispose of so large an output the manufac-
turers resorted to selling systems theretofore
unknown and not often heard of since then.
One of the plans was to exact that every
customer should contract for a fixed number
of instruments, to be delivered at stated in-
tervals, upon rigid terms of settlements. If
the agency could not comply with the terms
the piano was withdrawn from the agency and
given to some more accommodating rival.
And in that way the disposition of the, at the
time, great output was guaranteed in advance.
Nothing new in all that as history has since
shaped the piano industry, but the announce-
ment of the top-notch in numbers of the
earlier days created an impression. Today we
know that big industries turn out 10,000, or
15,000, or even 25,000 instruments yearly and
we do not utter surprise or ask what they do
with them. In some cases, as that of the H.
C. Bay Company, whose announcement ap-
pears elsewhere this week, we know that the
productiveness is great in response to a great
demand.
And if we wonder at the piano industry that
turns out approximately 500 instruments ev-
ery week, or even more than that, we marvel
much more at the courage and efficiency of
the man who controls so forceful an industry,
and so calmly and unostentatiously guides its
far-reaching destinies.
GERMANY LET IN
The clear-cut message of President Cool-
idge adds courage to the commercial inter-
ests of the country. All thinking business
men have read it and enjoyed the crisp con-
clusions which characterize its literary style,
without waste of a word. And, following the
President's cheerful forecast, came the new
treaty with Germany by which relations with
the people of foremost traditional music cul-
ture are fully resumed.
To be sure, it has been very long since Ger-
man pianos played a part in the American
trade. But small goods and supplies, as well
as creative genius from Germany, have con-
tributed steadily and at times richly. And
yet France has for very many years had a
greater influence upon the American piano
than any other foreign nation. For, while
German industry was sending over the accor-
deons and harmonicas, and certain small sup-
plies, the French actions of Herrburger-
Schwander remained the only important piano
parts imported for a long time.
In earlier days the case was different, and
Germany sent over not only many completed
pianos, but a large share of the supplies, both
wood and metal. The genius of the late Al-
fred Dolge rendered the importation of Ger-
man felts unnecessary,,and the exigencies of
the war brought into being the kind of indus-
try that makes it easily possible to employ
American made piano pins and steel wire.
So that today the renewal of trade with
Germany may not mean much to the Amer-
ican piano industry. It will, no doubt, cause
a rush of cheap and toy-like small instru-
ments, and in time it may be expected that the
marvelously low working conditions in the
unhappy land of Bach and Beethoven will im-
pel a renewed effort to send across specimens
of the larger instruments. There is no threat-
ened menace in that to our American pianos.
Our established instruments are so superior
to anything produced abroad that there can
be no "foreign invasion" in this business. And
methods of American piano manufacture have
at last become so far standardized and ex-
pedited that, great as the demand promises to
be, the supply may equally be adequate.
GOOD AS WE MAKE IT
December IS, 1923.
the store. That way is, of course, by local
advertising. The urge may be stimulated by
price allurement, or by the presentation of
novelty and utility. The piano dealer has all
of that, and he has another system of per-
sonal solicitation. He has the "prospects"
waiting, very often for the reminder as put
by the eloquent and energetic salesman.
That is one of the advantages of the piano
trade. It is a line of merchandise in which
the slogan, "business is as good as we make
it," can be successfully applied, because the
outside salesman can actually make business.
And the largely successful piano dealers know
how to do it. They know that, aside from
foodstuffs and other absolute essentials to
life, people are apt to be negligent. They will
postpone investment in even the things they
realize are almost indispensable to home hap-
piness. And pianos belong right there.
The average human being is seldom sure
that he knows what he wants. Until some
crisis arises he will not take time to investi-
gate the things to which his attention may
have been many times drawn. Today is al-
ways his busy day. He goes right on sup-
posing that such an investment as the piano
implies must mean a considerable hole in his
cash surplus. The educational influence of
the piano salesman is all that is needed.
So that "business is as good as we make
it" seems to have been coined for the piano
trade. If every piano dealer and salesman
who has had reason to complain, will make
a personal application of the newspaper
slogan results will change the trade tempera-
ture very quickly. It will be just a case of
getting out and making business good in
places where it has been indifferent or even
very poor. All of this has been said before in
other w r ords, perhaps, in the American Music
Trade w r eekly. But it can not be said too of-
ten as long as business is not as good as we
can make it.
LINKS PREMIER DEALER
WITH NATIONAL MESSAGES
Advertisement of Premier Grand Piano Corporation
in Mid-Week Pictorial Effective for Sales.
On December 6 the New York Times Mid-Week
Pictorial featured a full page Premier Grand Piano
Corporation advertisement of the series which has
been inserted in this national weekly since March this
year. It is the equal in strength and effectiveness
of the displays printed before. These Premier con-
sumer advertisements have produced wide interest
and have been the means of creating substantial busi-
ness besides.
The typical co-operation of the Premier Grand
Piano Corporation with the nation-wide chain of Pre-
mier dealers is consistently adhered to in this adver-
tisement, as in all others of this series, by directly
identifying these .distributors with the advertising
messages to the consumer.
A STRONG CABLE POSTER.
The alert publicity department of The Cable Com-
pany, Chicago, has furnished its dealers with one of
the most forceful posters, or "hangers," in trade his-
tory. It is a giant reproduction of the double page
spread which recently appeared in Presto. The pos-
ter features the straight upright, and gives emphasis
to the Cable Midget. Dealers will find the big illus-
trated sheet line for framing and hanging on the
wareroom walls. It will also make an eye-catching
feature of the window display. It is mailed in strong
tubes which protect it in delivery.
Some of the large city newspapers have
been running as a sort of slogan, the line "bus-^
iness is as good as we make it." It is one of
the suggestions that especially fits the piano
trade. For there are few lines of business
PLANS OF H. P. MAUS.
The H. P. Maus Piano House, Lima, Ohio, is to
that can be "made" in any such sense as that
be reorganized and the business expanded according
of selling pianos.
to the announcement of H. P. Maus, its president,
Most lines of trade are wholly dependent this week. An ambitious sales plan has been formu-
upon the public demand. The merchants must lated by Mr. Maus, who says his plans for the piano
will not be hindered by his activities for the
await the coming of their customers, and house
Page Organ Co., which is now proceeding on a
there is but one way to draw the buyers to steady basis employing forty workers.
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