Presto

TRADE A S S O C I A T I O N
ACTIVITIES
(bchoes prom the (clinics and
URNISHING ABUNDANT PROOF of revival in the
industry, the thirty-eighth annual Music Trades Con-
vention closed on the evening of August 3 at the Hotel
New Yorker. Approximately 3000 individuals representing
more than 1100 business organizations journeyed to New
York to register during the convention period. Individual
registrants exceeded by 600 the number reported for 19-58
and by more than 800 the number reported for 1937.
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It is still too early to make an intelligent estimate of the
business done at the Convention, but manufacturers and
wholesalers agree that this year's Convention was one of
the most profitable, if not the most profitable, in which they
have ever participated. The entire trade agreed that the
success of the Convention promises that the season of 1939-40
will be the most active and the most profitable the music
industries have seen in recent years.
Highlights of the Convention were the speeches of William
Howard Beasley, president of the Whittle Music Company
of Dallas and newly elected president of the National As-
sociation of Music Merchants, and Kenneth Collins, assistant
to the general manager of the New York Times. Mr. Beasley
gave a technical exposition of the principal problems of music
store management. Speaking on the subject "Managing a
Music Store for Profit," Mr. Beasley said in part:
"The qualifications of a manager are many. He must be
a first-rate accountant, an experienced salesman, a practical
economist, a successful financier, and a devoted teacher. . . .
Let me add, this trade cannot afford to take success for
granted. It has made mistakes in the past, and if we fail
to help one another, it may make them again.
"To quote Harry Scherman, 'It is not error but com-
placence in error that hurts.' Let us in this trade develop
'unsparing intellectual honesty and the scientific spirit.' Let
us make over our 'may-be happenstance' calling into a pro-
fession of which we may be justifiably proud. Men in this
industry, as in other industries, have watched 'the things
they gave their lives to broken,' but we need not 'stoop to
build them up with worn out tools.' "
KENNETH COLLINS SPEAKS
"To most people who have given the matter any thought,"
Mr. Collins said in preface to his speech, "the piano and
musical instrument business seems on the verge of a tre-
mendous expansion in sales and profits. Every condition
is favorable to such a result. The only thing that could
prevent its becoming a certainty would be a failure on the
part of the industry itself to recognize its present oppor-
tunities."
After sketching the history of the piano and instrument
business during the last thirty years, Mr. Collins indicated
that in his opinion the possible failure of the industry which
might affect its sales would come- if it came at all—in its
advertising and merchandising aspects.
"It is just axiomatic in any industry," Mr. Collins said,
"that depends for its success on wide, broad-scale distribu-
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(conventions
tion, that it must employ some powerful form of publicity.
People in the mass can't be reached in any other way. It
is futile to suppose that they will seek you.
"I cannot plead this too strongly. And in the case of your
industry, it seems a crying shame that, with people obviously
in a receptive frame of mind, they should not be told, and
told convincingly, about what you have to sell.
". . . It takes courage to advertise a business when con-
ditions are adverse. It just takes good business sense to do
so when business conditions are favorable."
Judging from visitors' impressions of the Convention,
the music trades enter the 1939-40 season with high hopes
and a greater emphasis on advertising and selling than ever
before. Like Mr. Collins, the trade anticipates a great in-
crease in volume, and like Mr. Collins, the trade knows
that only its own failings can cause it to lose that greater
volume, or to fail to translate it into greater profits.
OHIO MERCHANTS MEET
The twenty-eighth annual convention of the Music Mer-
chants Association of Ohio was held at the Commodore
Perry Hotel, Toledo, September 10, 11 and 12. The Ohio
Association is one of the strongest regional associations
within the trade.
In line with the music industries' current emphasis on
merchandising and public relations, features of this year's
Ohio Convention were speeches by Dr. E. L. Bowsher, Toledo
Superintendent of Schools, Marguerite Howard, Home Edi-
tor of the Toledo Times, and a Sales Clinic conducted by
Lawrence H. Selz. The Sales Clinic will be held on Monday,
September 11, and for the morning session Mr. Sel/ has sched-
uled addresses by Miss Howard, H. A. Trumbull of the
Owens-Illinois Company and Clarence Burden of the Metro-
politan Life Insurance Company. Mr. Trumbull, merchan-
dise manager of the glass container division of the Owens-Illi-
nois Company, spoke on "How Other Industries Meet Their
Sales Problems." Mr. Burden described the prospect-finding
work of the Metropolitan Life.
The afternoon session of the Sales Clinic consisted of a
series of panel discussions of technical problems within
the music trades. W. W. Smith of the J. W. Greene Com-
pany, Toledo, discussed operating costs and potential
profits of service departments; Otto B. Heaton of Heaton's
Music Store, Columbus, talked about the leadership of
music merchants in community music life; and Chester D.
Anderson of the Anderson Piano Company, Dayton, dis-
cussed the relationship of gross sales to advertising. The
afternoon session closed with a speech by Ray Erlandson
of the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, Cincinnati, on the
advantages and disadvantages of teaching music in the store.
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One of the largest and most important regional dealer
meetings and sales clinics of the 1939-40 season will be con-
ducted by Lawrence H. Selz at the Palmer House in Chicago
on Monday, October 9. See the October PRESTO MUSJC
TIMES for details.
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