24
PRESTO-TIMES
FOCUS MORE ON GRANDS
Gulbransen Offers Bonuses to Travelers and Salesmen for Grand Piano Orders
E. P. Williams, sales manager, Gulbransen Com-
pany, recently addressed a letter to his trade which is
well worth reading by any dealer whether of Gulbran-
sen affiliation or otherwise.
To begin with Mr. Williams mentions the current
Gulbransen output.in this brief statement:
"Having accomplished in September the largest
month's business in a decade, prospects augur well
the balance of 1937 for Gulbransen dealers."
The letter then calls attention to something of par-
ticular interest to the trade. For every dealer knows
that often, in the desire to close a sale, a $300 deal is
the result when it might have been the sale of a grand,
a life-long, satisfying instrument, at a substantial grand
piano price, instead of a substitute soon to be traded
in for something of greater proportions and more
satisfying.
Here is Mr. Williams' argument and his request
to heed:
"We fear there is a tendency on the part of many
salesmen to take the 'course of least resistance' in
selling console models when the conventional grand
could be sold if properly pushed. This is not said in
any spirit of criticism, but we all know that bigger
sales units mean more dollars of profit, and it is, there-
tore, to the advantage of the dealer to sell his prospect
as high-priced an instrument as circumstances will
warrant. We want to emphasize the benefits that
will accrue to our dealers by giving more attention
to the sale of conventional grands. At no season of
the year are there as many of your prospects 'grand-
minded' as before the holidays."
Mr. Williams has asked for cooperation in this
effort to manifest the supremacy of the grand and
to encourage travelers to focus their own as well as
their dealers' attention on grands. A premium was
offered to Gulbransen traveling men for October sales
on grand orders. This offer, it was suggested, might
be extended to dealers in relation to their own sales-
men for pre-holiday business.
Gulbransen has steadily and consistently kept the
conventional grand to the fore as the prime leader in
the piano business. And they know, too, as does every
dealer, that there are many homes which, as Gulbran-
sen has repeated, will not consider the purchase of any
other type of piano than the regular, time-honored
triangular grand.
THE MATHUSHEK GOES WELL WITH LYON & HEALY
Plan Important Selling Campaign
. . . The Mathushek piano agency for the Chicago
territory through going to Lyon & Healy places that
instrument in a distinctive position in the Chicago
downtown central location and a still greater promi-
ence in the generally characterized Chicago territory.
Upon taking over the Mathushek Agency, Lyon &
Healy, secured enough instruments to make some-
thing of a display and a short while after came the
first shipment of a carload direct from the factory
which enabled them to make an exceedingly attrac-
tive window showing of the latest Mathushek models
and the complete line of the new Spinetgrands. Two
placards announcing the Mathushek agency were in
the great Lyon & Healy window, along with the
pianos, on one of which was the following: "The
decorative charm of the old Spinet is combined with
the musical beauty of the modern grand piano in the
Spinet by Mathushek"
On another was the following announcement: "An-
nouncing the new and musically sensational
Spinet Grand Exclusively Mathushek
From Pianos to Autos and
Other Things
the most welcome creation in progressive develop-
ments of the grand piano."
The entire Mathushek line, all carried by Lyon &
Healy, embraces the Mathushek grands and uprights,
the Mathushek Spinetgrands and Spinet Cabinet
models and gives that great Chicago house another
instrument of the first-grade class. This ensemble
of Mathushek's as shown in the Lyon & Healy win-
dow display made an exceedingly attractive appear-
ance and gave Chicago people a visual conception of
Lyon & Jlealy's new and valued piano distribution.
A photograph has been received at Presto-Times'
office showing a row of Mathusheks: Spinetgrands,
and conventional grands and uprights, boxed and
crated awaiting shipment at the platform of the New
York Central, Bronx district, freight depot, near the
Mathushek factory. This was a super-car shipment
and the instruments with Lyon & Healy salesrooms
make a wonderfully attractive addition to their
Mathushek line, now one of the star Lyon & Healy
piano agencies.
1883, using the store, and the second floor for ware-
rooms and a music hall seating 400. There were 30
music studios. We were there for seven years and
as Albert Weber, II, paid no attention to renewing
the lease we moved out in 1890 into a five-story build-
ing at 248 Wabash Ave., on a five years' lease. It was
during that period, 1890 to 1895, that the Manufac-
turers' Piano Company was born. We stayed there
until 1895 when we moved to 258-260 Wabash Ave.,
having the first two floors and basement. Along
about this time the Weber Piano Co. went into re-
ceivership and I was made ancillary receiver of the
Chicago Company. During this period the big fire oc-
curred at the Chicago Cottage Organ Store. I met
H. D. Cable on the street during the fire and offered
him our warerooms and we assigned our lease to the
Cables. I then took a store at 268 Wabash Avenue
and was so successful that we took on the store ad-
joining, called 266-268. It was while there that the
Manufacturers' Piano Company got its quietus
brought about by the merger made by Wheelock with
the Aeolian Company."
Nov.-Dec, 1937
WILLIAM B. ARMSTRONG
The late Wm. B. Armstrong, "Billy" to his last
days by his close friends, joined Geo. G. Foster in the
early nineties, in the years of Mr. Foster's "venture"
in piano manufacture, at Rochester and they continued
together as partners and co-owners on through their
vicissitudes, and the tremendous successes that came
in later years and up to the merger of the American
Piano Co. with the Aeolian Corporation, forming the
Aeolian American Corporation, of which Mr. Foster
is now the chairman of the board.
When Foster and Armstrong joined up together,
they changed the name from Foster Piano Co. to
Foster-Armstrong Company and later on they were
the prime movers in the organization of the American
Piano Company, the control of which passed out
of their hands in 1927 when they and their associates
sold the common stock of the American Corporation
to a syndicate who, in turn, distributed the stock to
the public and took over the active management. It
was at this time that Mr. Armstrong retired from ac-
tive business entirely, but he and Mr. Foster retained
their close personal friendship right up to the end.
The American-Aeolian merger, brought into the
united corporation, known as the Aeolian American
Corporation, a great phalanx of pianos: Chickering
from Boston and, later on, Mason & Hamlin, from
Boston; Knabe from Baltimore, and more than twenty
others including such well-known names as Ampico,
Aeolian, Duo-Art, J. & C. Fischer, Gabler, Haines
Bros., Laffargue, Geo. Steck & Co., Weber, Wheel-
ock. The manufacture of this immense aggregation
of pianos, most of them active going instruments of
the day, made the "Foster-Armstrong" factories at
East Rochester, X. Y., perhaps the most important
piano production center of the world.
As already mentioned it was in the early 1890's
that "Billy" Armstrong and George Foster met. Mr.
Foster had started making pianos in a loft out on State
Street, Rochester, out beyond the New York Central
tracks, and Mr. Armstrong, who was in the lumber
business in Rochester, sold Foster some lumber. This
led up to the events that followed.
* * *
Many friends of Joseph Klepac, Superintendent and
Acoustical Expert for Story & Clark Piano Com-
pany's factory at Grand Haven, Michigan, are sym-
pathizing with him over the death of his wife, Mrs.
Kristiane Klepac, Saturday, September 25, 1937.
* * *
Mr. V. V. Williams, who passed away at San
Antonio, Texas, some weeks ago, was known as a
popular and efficient retail piano man and he was
popular in his various associations in this trade, among
them the E. E. Forbes Music House, the San An-
tonio Music Co., and one or two Wurlitzer stores. A
son of the deceased Harry Williams, is the manager
of the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company store at Syra-
cuse, N. Y.
Wurlitzer Quarterly
Statement
From Cincinnati comes the regular quarterly report
of the earning of the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company.
The consolidated net profit for the second quarter
of the present year are $608,239. This is for the
period ended September 30, and showed equal to $1.60
a share on 380,520 shares of common stock outstand-
ing, after provisions for reserve, normal Federal and
State income taxes.
During the first quarter of the fiscal year ended
June 30, net profit was $633,868, making total earn-
ings of $1,242,107, or equivalent to $3.27 per common
share.
In a statement to stockholders, Farny R. Wurlitzer,
president, said that sales for the third quarter were
holding at a satisfactory level in all divisions of the
business. He added that there is a constantly grow-
ing demand for musical instruments of all types,
particularly pianos and accordions. The company is
the largest manufacturer and retailer of accordions
in the country.
Anent the razing of the building at 430-32 South
Wabash avenue, Chicago, in which had been housed
in years past various concerns identified with music
and music trade interests and where for a long time
the late Platt P. Gibbs conducted his music publish-
ing business, and other similar changes in Chicago's
Piano Row some of them, as in the case of the former
Wurlitzef building in the Jackson-Van Buren block,
and the one-time Reeds Temple of Music building, at
Van Buren and Dearborn Sts., Mr. Louis Dederick,
for a long time prominent in the music trade of
Chicago, now with the Harald Pracht Music House,
San Francisco Kimball representative, has an interest-
ing story, a suitable caption for which might be,
"Chicago's Old-time Two Block Piano Row." Com-
menting on these changes Mr. Dederick says:
From the Wurlitzer piano factory at De Kalb, 111.,
"Soon after my arrival in Chicago in the spring of
there has just been turned out an instrument quite
1882 I secured a position with the Chicago branch of
ultra, ultra in Spinet type piano construction. The
This brings Mr. Dederick's story up to about 1905 manufacturer's announcement bears out the thought
the estate of Albert Weber, then located at 250-252
Wabash Ave. Charles C. Curtis and Ferdinand when Mr. Uhl leased the property for the Wurlitzer of newest, latest and most original classification of
Co. for which house he had come to Chicago to open "Designed in the Modern Trend." In short the man-
Mayer were the managers. Over on the southwest
corner of Wabash Ave. and Jackson St. was a lot a branch store.
ner of designing conforms to the actual vogue of
of 40 foot frontage on Wabash Ave. and 80 feet on
Mr. Dederick was relating these incidents in con- today and shows itself to be one grand coup in di-
Jackson St. The owner of this lot was one A. J. nection with the tearing down of the Wurlitzer build- minutive piano building and a coup d'eclat in con-
Averill and he contracted with the Weber estate to ing to make room for the automobile parking estab- sole modeling, or, what one could say in the vernacu-
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).
put up a six-story
building into which we moved in lishment
which
has
replaced
that
structure.
lar, "going some."
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with
support from
NAMM
- The
International
Music
Products Association (www.namm.org).
IN THE MODERN TREND
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/