Music Trade Review

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¥ HE MUSIC ¥ RADE REVIEW
3—+-EDWARD LYMAN BILL-* •< •
Editor and Proprietor
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
3 East 14th St., New York
SUBSCRIPTION (including postage), United States,
Mexico and Canada, |i.oo per year ; all other countries,
$300.
ADVERTISE/IE NTS, $2.00 per inch, single column, per
insertion. On quarterly or yearly contracts a special dis-
count is allowed. Advertising Pages $50.00, opposite read-
ing matter $75.00.
REMITTANCES, in other than currency form, should
be made payable to Edward Lyman Bill.
Entered at the New York Post Office as Second Class Matter.
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 31, 1898.
TELEPHONE NUMBER, 1745-EIQHTEENTH STREET.
THE KEYNOTE.
The first week of each month, The Review will
contain a supplement embodying the literary
and musical features which have heretofore
appeared in The Keynote. This amalgamation
will be effected without in any way trespassing
on our regular news service. The Review will
continue to remain, as before, essentially a
trade paper.
SPEAKING OF TRUSTS.
** 'TRUSTS and department stores," and
what in the world are departmen t
stores but limited trusts ? The absorbent
power of trusts is phenomenal, likewise that
of the department store.
A kind of a miniature trust is the depart-
ment store and it is that miniature trust
that the piano merchants of America must
grapple with and in the end one must be
defeated, for the trade cannot exist half
free, half trust bound.
One great factor which is on the side of
the piano merchant—a factor which has
decided every great contest — a factor
which has swept away thrones and demol-
ished dynasties—a factor which the poles
do not cool, or the equator diminish—pub-
lic opinion.
Public opinion, in the case of the depart-
ment store against the piano merchant,
will be of that peculiar consistency that
will cause purchasers to gravitate to the
regular stores rather than the department
stores when they wish to purchase such an
important auxiliary to home comfort as a
piano.
The impelling power will not be as much
a question of price as of pride, and therein
lies the key to the department store com-
petition and the reason why the regular
dealer will have the support of public
opinion. Not because the average citizen
is averse to buying from a department
store, for he is not, but because he is averse
to having all his friends acquainted with
the fact that he dropped into Racy's and
bought one of their Red Star pianos.
Why?
Because there is an unmistakable odor of
cheapness about them, that he is not de-
sirous of having scent up his parlor.
What an awful slump, too,his pride would
take should he happen to overhear one of
his guests remark, " S o Cheaplots bought
one of those ' Red Star ' pianos at Racy's?
I have seen them advertised for weeks for
a hundred and ten dollars."
Or if his friend Mr. Highnobs invites
a few intimates around to spend the even-
ing and one of the ladies should happen to
notice the name upon his piano and should
gushingly remark, "And so that is one of
those bargain ' Werven' pianos that
Gloomydalehas been offering."
How painful the pause would be.
Did you ever know a man to buy a pres-
ent in a department store, remove the
wrapper bearing the stamp of the store
and substitute another before sending?
We have, and what caused him to do it ?
Why, naturally he did not wish the one
for whom the present was intended to
know that he was patronizing the bargain
counters of a department store.
He could secure bargains at Tiffany's or
any other standard regular store without
laying himself open to the charge of secur-
ing cheap or unreliable wares, but once the
threshold of the department store is crossed
there is at once a taint of cheapness which
is most desirable to have disassociated with
an important purchase.
Now it is at this point the pride comes
in in a determining sense.
The one article in the average home that
its owner does not wish to smack of depart-
ment store cheapness is a piano. It is the
piece de resistance of home adornment.
No matter how old it is, he likes it to be
of reputable make, and there is an atmos-
phere of distrust about articles of a certain
class, purchased from a department store.
The name upon the fall board of a piano
has a value in the estimation of the public
and while there may be quantities of
pianos of a certain class sold from depart-
ment stores, that portion of the purchasing
public which we may designate as the
intermediate class will naturally gravitate
to the regular depots of supply.
The name upon the fall-board of a piano
is to a large degree an index of the charac-
ter of the instrument, and it is that name
that is hard to obliterate.
There are other factors which militate
against department store success.
Suppose the agency of a reputable piano
was placed with a department store.
The department stores presumably will
offer the instruments at cut rates.
Then the other agents will object and
probably will drop the instrument from
their lists.
Suppose the department store does not
cut prices?
Then it does no business or least not
enough to warrant devoting to a display of
musical instruments so much space, which
could be better utilized in other ways.
The department store, like its elder
brother the trust, is in business for money,
sells cheap, true, but in the main its stock is
cheap—people are beginning to learn it.
They are not all fools, neither are they
wholly ignorant of mercantile methods.
The thinking portion know full well that
business cannot be done without profit,
neither can large and elaborately equipped
establishments be conducted wholly on
glory and philanthropy. They have their
doubts about the numerous and stupendous
cut prices, they question the specialty of
the special sale.
They know that if a department store
offers a piano for one hundred and twenty
dollars the management of that institution
is losing no money on the transaction.
They know that no man in business can
afford to do away with a profit.
They know that while a merchant can
afford to place a few gross of gloves upon
a bargain counter at a profit of a few cents
per pair he cannot afford to place a large
number of pianos on sale at a price that
does not insure him a profit.
In the first case the handling is rapid,
the amount involved in the individual sale
is small and the sale is repeated in some
cases several times a year.
In the second case the handling is ex-
pensive and laborious, the amount involved
is considerable and the sale is not repeated;
hence a restricted distribution which is not
at all to the liking of the department store
magnate.
That pianos will always be on sale in
department stores is an assured fact.
That the department store will become
the dominant factor in the distribution of
pianos is the veriest fancy which will not
bear an analytical examination.
A TRADE PHANTOM.
'THE whole scheme of department store
dominancy has its origin in the schem-
ing brain of a trade editor who for years has
ridden rough shod over manufacturers at
will and who now seeks to frighten piano
men by asserting that the department
store means the destruction of the legiti-
mate trade. That the piano dealers are
doomed — that the manufacturers them-
selves are now upon their last legs, as it
were, and that the only panacea is a
TRUST ! !
Mark you, a trust will save everything—a
trust is the sheet anchor—the shining light.