Presto

PRESTO-TIMES
The American Music Trade Weekly
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
PRESTO P U B L I S H I N G CO., Publishers.
F R A N K D. A B B O T T - - - - - - - - - -
Editor
(C. A. DAN I ELL—1904-1927.)
J. FERGUS O'RYAN
_ _ _ _ _ Managing Editor
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 0234.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), " P R E S T O , " Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the
Fost Office, Chicago, III., under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1.25; 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 correspondents, and
their assistance is invited.
Payment is not accepted for matter printed in the edi-
torial or news columns of Presto-Times.
Where half-tones are made the actual cost of produc-
tion will be charged if of commercial character or other
than strictly news interest.
When electrotypes are sent for publication it is re-
quested that their subjects and senders be carefully indi-
cated.
Forms close at noon on Thursday. Late news matter
should be in not later than 11 o'clock on that day. Ad-
vertising copy should be in hand before Tuesday, 5 p. m.,
to insure preferred position. Pull page display copy
should be in hand by Tuesday noon preceding publication
day. Want advertisements for current week, to insure
classification, should be in by Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1928.
The last form of Presto-Times goes to press
at 11 a. m. Thursday. Any news transpiring
after that hour cannot be expected in the cur-
rent issue. Nothing received at the office that
is not strictly news of importance can have
attention after 9 a. m. on Thursday. If they
concern the interests of manufacturers or
dealers such items will appear the week follow-
ing. Copy for advertising designed for the
current issue must reach the office not later
(.han Wednesday noon of each week.
CUSTOMERS AS PROSPECTS
The dealer who organizes his selling activ-
ities sets clown in detail the descriptions of
his prospective buyers. Alert piano sales man-
agers distinguish the piano prospect from the
piano customer, but the differences are not so
great. The prospect is a prospective buyer
until he actually pays his full price or his first
installment on his chosen instrument; the cus-
tomer never ceases to be a prospect. In fact,
observant managers have learned that many
piano owners are the most likely prospects for
further sales.
The great increase in the number of chil-
dren taking class instruction and the spread
of piano classes in schools suggests a definite
course of action in the pursuit of sales. The
families represented by the youthful pupils
may have pianos but that fact does not dis-
courage the selling efforts of the dealers.
A cheap or moderately-priced piano, consid-
ered by parents as good enough while the chil-
dren are taking their earlier lessons, no longer
fills the requirements when the youthful pupils
arrive at a more advanced stage in their musi-
cal education. Then, to the ambitious students
and their sympathetic parents, the best piano
is not too good for practice.
Many successful managers in piano depart-
ments now recognize the truth of the fore-
going and their salesmen find valuable use of
their time in systematically interviewing the
old customers with a view to immediate or
future sales. The changes in the character of
the pianos within recent years suggest a new
mode of procedure to the salesmen in their
pleas to the old piano owners. Whether the
owners are fixtures in their dwelling places or
whether they are of the kind who annually
change their abodes, the ingenious piano sales-
man is equipped with arguments that interest.
The home owner, who usually has not the
detriment or cramped quarters to limit his
choice in piano dimensions, is a good prospect
for a fine grand of full or medium size. But
anyway, the grand is something he is easily in-
terested in, and it is in the pretentious homes
that the splendid Period models have their
greatest assurance of sale. But the piano
owner who lives in a rented apartment is also
considered a good prospect for the purchase of
a baby grand and the allurements of the little
upright tastefully decorated to match color
schemes are powerful in effecting sales.
PIANO LASTS TOO LONG
The decrease in piano production is caused
by the lack of replacement business, according
to Mr. Paul B. Klugh, president of the Zenith
Radio Corporation. Pianos are made so good
that no other manufactured product in the
world can stand such a test of time, he said.
If pianos, like automobiles, had a limited life,
the piano business would be much larger. He
spoke with the wisdom of his piano experience
when he said to a convention of the music
trade recently in Philadelphia :
"Now consider the automobile for a moment.
Its period of usefulness is indeed very short.
But more important than this is the steady
propaganda which has gone on for the past
twenty years and has finally resulted in con-
vincing a great majority of automobile owners
thai" they need new cars. The constantly
changing styles and the little improvements
appearing each year make owners of old cars
long to possess the newer models. Now that
almost every family in the United States owns
an automobile, it has been proved that the
much discussed 'point of saturation' will never
be attained because of what automobile men
term replacement business."
THE PROMOTION COMMITTEE
Statements and discussions at the recent
meeting in Chicago of the Piano Promotion
Committee of the National Piano Manufactur-
ers' Association indicated the extent of the
work already done and that ready for use or
in course of preparation. The advertising put
into use by the committee, according to adver-
tising standards, is bringing uncommon results
in answers and inquiries for piano informa-
tion. They show that the public is strongly
interested in pianos and consider them with
more favor than even the piano trade is aware
of.
An increased schedule of piano display ad-
vertising is being published in well-selected
magazines month by month. It is clearly dem-
onstrated that the piano trade is receiving a
vast amount of worthwhile publicity for the
money being spent. The dealer use of the
material provided by the committee also
checks up to almost a similar amount. In
other words, the funds of the committee have
been augmented by voluntary help to an ex-
tent that has made one dollar seem to buy
four to five dollars' worth of piano propa-
ganda.
An interesting and enlightening feature of
the coming convention at the Commodore Ho-
tel, New York, the week of June 4 is a com-
plete display of all of the material of the Piano
Promotion Committee. This will be main-
tained throughout the week, in charge of Ex-
May 19, 1928
ecutive Secretary Boykin and his assistants.
All supporters of this campaign will then have
an opportunity of learning- in detail what is
being done in promoting the piano, while, for
visiting dealers, it should be a source of in-
spiration and help, and of a lively interest.
HELPING PIANO SALESMAN
At every convention of the piano trade the
importance of the salesman is impressed.
While admitting the potency of promotion
schemes of one kind and another, every piano
merchant admits the necessity for the personal
appeal in effecting piano sales. The local news-
paper ad is good for the piano dealer and the
follow-up schemes by mail are not without
their important possibilities. But with many
dealers in large cities, small towns and rural
communities the outside salesman is the de-
pendable reliance for discovering the prospects
and closing the sales. The trained prospect
finder and sales closer is a valuable personage
and the training of men and women for this
phase of selling is very important.
The effectiveness of promotional advertising
for the piano is obvious. It is an admirable
method of creating the background that makes
the work of the salesman easier. The impor-
tance of the piano in the general scheme for
creating a greater love for fine music is made
clearer by the printed word in magazine and
newspaper. Promotional advertising of the
splendid kind now familiar to magazine and
newspaper readers makes the salesman's work
more definite. Anything read or heard that
creates the piano frame of mind in the public
makes easier the work of the piano salesman.
Of course the responsibility of the dealer or
sales manager is to get results from the pro-
motional work organized by the National
Piano Manufacturers Association and other
agencies. They should organize activities in
the store and in the field outside. Every sally
forth of the prospect finder is really a follow-
up of organized piano sales promotion efforts.
Years and years ago the national association
of piano dealers started to bell the fake tuner,
a nervy individual with a ten-cent-store screw
driver and a hammer, who by a few passes
caused good pianos to become bad and bad ones
to become several degrees worse. His was a
profitable although not a tuneful lay, and the
ease with which odd dollars of piano owners
were garnered made the calling an attractive
one. It is a cheerful sign of betterment in
trade methods that the fake tuner is a thing of
the past and an evidence of the power of the
National Association of Piano Tuners.
* * *
There used to be piano men who held that
the guessing schemes, bean jar, and other va-
rieties of the piano contest were subjects for
the bell, book and candle; trade devils of a
particularly demoniacal kind. On the other
hand, there were men of the trade who con-
sidered the numerous schemes desirable. The
former, of course, were loud in denunciation
of the schemes on every occasion and at the
trade conventions especially. They read like
ancient history today.
* * *
Your charming friend, the old-fashioned dol-
lar, may not yet be pre-war stuff but the Na-
tional Industrial Conference Board has re-
ported that during March it had gotten back to
62.1 cents, which is the nearest that it has yet
approached to its 1914 purchasing power.
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