Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
SOflE DEALERS WHOn WE KNOW
PROMINENT MEN WHO HAVE HELPEI> TO MAKE MUSIC TRADE HISTORY ON THE PACIFIC COAST.
Some manufacturers have already taken
advantage of the advice given in a pre-
vious letter, wherein I stated that the Pa-
cific Coast was a fruitful field for the piano
manufacturer to develop. In my opinion,
it will be for many years to come one of
the select piano territorial districts of the
United States, and it will respond with
surprising alacrity to the touch of the argu-
mentative and persuasive piano salesman.
California is a country of immense dis-
tances. They speak of a little run from
Los Angeles to San Francisco in the same
way that the average New Yorker refers
QUINCY A. CHASE.
to a trip to Albany, and still it is a distance
of five hundred miles. In the same man-
ner reference will be made to a trip to
Salt Lake City and to Portland in the
same indifferent way, and from San Fran-
cisco to Salt Lake City it is nearly nine
hundred miles.
But, to get back to the music trade. I
shall in this, and in subsequent issues of
The Review, tell something of the men
who hav.e made music trade history in the
various parts of the country which I have
visited during the past few months. I
mean that these sketches shall be not only
personal, but historical as well.
KOHLER &. CHASE.
I cannot say that the founder of this
celebrated music house was a forty-niner,
but he approached closely to it, as Andrew
Kohler reached San Francisco, in 1850 after
a long voyage from Boston via Cape Horn.
He was aided by a loyal and ambitious
wife who helped him to accumulate enough
money to purchase a lot on Stockton street
where he first began business. Later
Quincy A. Chase, the surviving partner of
the original combination joined him in
1853. At that time there was but one
other musical instrument dealer in San
Francisco.
In those days the music business, like
everything else in California, paid large
profits, and the firm of Kohler & Chase
soon accumulated substantial property.
They changed their business location as the
tide of trade turned, and they now occupy
an imposing new building Nos. 26, 28, 30
O'Farrell street. They have occupied these
magnificent quarters since 1891. They
are large and commodious, the building
having a frontage on O'Farrell street of
sixty feet, five stories in height.
The firm of Kohler & Chase carry a large
stock of all kinds of musical instruments,
and the customer is indeed hard to please
who cannot be suited I will say in the
piano line, with Knabc, Fischer, Kimball,
Franklin, Blasius, Regent and Trowbridge
pianos. They handle a complete line of
organs of celebrated makes, and they are
also agents for the ^Eolian, Pianola and
Vocalion.
Mr. Quincy A. Chase still maintains an
active oversight of the business with which
he has been closely identified for nearly a
half century. Mr. Chase has around him
loyal attachees who take a warm interest in
the business. I may mention Mr. T. P.
Winter, who has been head of the book-
keeping department for more than thirty
years. It was only recently that I recorded
the presentation of a Colonial silver tea
service to him by the firm.
Probably no name is better known on the
Pacific Coast than Kohler & Chase, for
travel where you will, you will find that
Kohler & Chase are known from Mexico to
the British possessions.
THE WILEY B. ALLEN CO.
In the Pacific-Northwest that great big
Oregon corporation known as the Wiley B.
Allen Co. have a tremendous influence.
Wiley B. Allen, the founder, is still a young
man, and has, I trust, many years of use-
fulness before him, having only reached
play upon cornstalk fiddles. As he ma-
tured he gave his father no peace until he
purchased him an accordeon. Next in line
came an organ and in 1877 young Allen
entered the music business on his own ac-
count in San Jose, Cal.
To those who are not familiar with the
growth and development of the Pacific
Coast it may be interesting to state that
the present Allen establishment at Port-
land occupies a four-story building, re-
plete with music and musical merchandise
from basement to roof. The building has
a fifty foot frontage on two streets and
from this establishment an enormous busi-
ness is conducted throughout the entire
Pacific North-west. The salesmen well
know that Allen places no order for less
WILEY B. ALLEN.
than a carload, and it is quite, an. ordinary
thing for him to order a hundred pianos
from one house.
Wiley B. Allen is quite as modest and
unassuming as years ago when he began
with a few hundred dollars capital, half of
which he invested in a Pease piano.
I may state an incident showing the ex-
tensive operations of this concern by say-
ing that the company have just issued a
list of piano customers, printing the names
and addresses in full of over a thousand
sales that have been made within the past
two months.
In the Wiley B. Allen establishment may
be found pianos of the following makes:
Knabe, Hardman, Fischer, Ludwig, Har-
rington, Jewett, Kingsbury, Franklin, El-
lington and Hamilton. In organs, the
Mason & Hamlin, Estey, Chicago Cottage
and Ann Arbor.
When asked recently to what reasons he
attributed his success in life, Mr. Allen re-
plied: "To my lieutenants. The building
up of a business is much like fighting a
great battle; one must have faithful em-
ployees and good salesmen must be kept
constantly in the field of action, for much
THOS. P. WINTER.
depends upon the efforts and influence
his forty-fourth year. They say up in which they exert, and I may say that re-
Oregon that in tender years Wiley evinced sponsibilities rest on the shoulders of
a great fondness for musical instruments everyone from office boy up.''
•
and that it was his delight to make and to
The Wiley B. Allen Co. is incorporated