Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
naturally mean the aggrandizement of the systematic, energetic
merchants.
/
EDWARD LYMAN BILL, - Editor and Proprietor
J. B. SPILLANE, Managing Editor
Executive and Reportorlal Stall:
GKO. B. KBLLEII.
IJ. E. BOWEKS.
\V. N. TYLEH.
War. B. WHITE.
F. H. THOMPSON.
EMILIR FRANCES BAUER.
L. J. CHAMBERLIN.
A. J. NICKXIN.
CHICAGO OFFICE:
K. P. VAN HAKLINGEN, 195-197 Wabash Ave.
TELEPHONES : Central 414 ; Automatic 8G43.
PHILADELPHIA OFFICE: MINNEAPOLIS and ST. PAUL: ST. LOUIS OFFICE
BOSTON OFFICE:
ERNEST L. WAITT, 173 Tremont St.
K. W. KAUFFMAN.
E. C. TORREY.
CHAS. N. VAN BUREN.
SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE: ALFRED METZGEH, 425-427 Front St.
CINCINNATI, O.:
NINA PUGH-SMITH.
Published Every Saturday at 1 Madison Avenue, New York
~TMIE catalogue house man also is encroaching on the domain
A
of the regular merchants in the smaller towns. One great
concern in Chicago distributed forty millions of merchandise last
year throughout the country. Of course the vast number of sales
represented in this grand total must mean the curtailment of busi-
ness somewhere among the smaller merchants, and selling as the
catalogue house does everything which enters into the home con-
sumption, it appeals to the average purchaser, who is impressed
with the huge catalogue, issued by the concern, and is apt to be
influenced by the endless variety of merchandise, portrayed by illus-
trations which confront him as he turns the hundreds of pages.
A good many pianos have been sold through the catalogue
houses, and still as yet few dealers have been able to locate many
of these instruments in their respective localities. They have been
distributed, however, throughout the mountain regions of the South,
and in many villages in other sections.
Entered at the New York Post Office as Second Class Matter.
SUBSCRIPTION,(including postage), United States, Mexico, and Canada, $2.00 pi-r
year ; all other countries, $4.00.
ADVERTISEMENTS, $2.00 per inch, single column, per insertion. On quarterly or
yearly contracts a special discount is allowed. Advertising Pages, $50.00 ; opposite
reading matter, $75.00.
REMITTANCES, in other than currency form, should be made payable to Edward
Lyuian Bill.
Directory ol Piano
__
.
Manuiacturera
The directory of piano manufacturing firms and corporations
found on another page will be of great value, as a reference
f o i . dealers and others.
LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE—NUMBER 1745 GRAMERCY
NEW
YORK,
F E B R U A R Y
1 0 ,
1906
EDITORIAL
T
HE'small piano dealer stands a better chance against the en-
croachment of centralization than does the merchant in al-
most any other lines of business, at least he has the opportunity in
many cases of preparing his argument and presenting the claims
which he may make for his particular instrument before the pur-
chaser closes a bargain.
With other lines there is apparently an irresistible tendency on
the part of the people to patronize the great mercantile emporiums,
otherwise known as the department stores, and a department store,
broadly defined, is a combination of stores under one root and man-
aged by one general head.
While the people will gather at these vast emporiums to supply
their varied wants, they do not shop for pianos in the same way that
they do for dress goods, or other articles which change with every
varying whim of fashion.
I
T is interesting to note the development of these vast retail
trade establishments. We may say that substantially all of the
department stores which have been in existence more than a dozen
years were at one time dry goods establishments. The dry goods
store is in a sense a family store, in that it caters to family trade,
and it was but natural that the dry goods stores should be divided
and sub-divided to meet changing conditions. The country village
store is virtually a department store suitable to village needs. In it
is displayed almost everything, and the great city department
store is simply an evolution of the smaller establishments in the
country.
T
FTER a man has made purchases from a great catalogue con-
cern for a number of years it is certain that any prejudice
which he may have had against buying a piano from such a source
has been somewhat removed by reason of continuous trading with
the concern. The small dealers are inclined to view the catalogue
house competition with greater fear than the department stores.
The catalogue house aims wholly to eliminate the middle man,
simply using the slogan, "from factory to home"—one profit. The
department store man uses as his argument a perfect system and
a conduct of business along scientific lines enables him to sell mer-
chandise at a small margin of profit. Between the two—upper ami
nether trade millstones—the smaller dealers are evidently becoming
somewhat alarmed, judging from communications which reach this
office from time to time.
A
LARM is hardly necessary. A cool business-head is much
A
better. As far back as we can go in recorded history we find
the people of various periods have been confronted by problems
of many kinds—business, political, religious and social, and the
people of our day do not seem to be fully removed from perplexing
environment. In other words, it is harder to conduct business
to-day than it was some years ago, and in order to succeed a man
must eliminate wholly the haphazard methods and get down to a
perfect system of business conduct.
There is more business to be secured than ever before and the
man who has the best system will probably be able to capture the
greater portion of it.
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1
HE retail merchants, however, are not the only ones who have
problems to meet and solve successfully if they are to con-
tinue along the path of prosperity. The manufacturers in all lines
are confronted by conditions which require the most careful
handling in order that a solution may be reached which is favorable
to their interests.
There has been a constantly rising tide in the cost of manufac-
turing in all lines, and as the years roll on the cost limit does not
seem to be reached, while it has been in some trades, particularly
in the piano industry, extremely difficult to raise prices in order that
they may be fairly adjusted with the increasing costs.
The solution of the business problem, necessary to achieve
success, to-day depends upon the elimination of waste, and in the
progressive piano plants of this country every effort is now
being made to systematize the business in such a way that com-
petition may be met successfully, and intelligently, and at the same
time secure to customers the largest values. In fact the subject
is one which interests every department of trade. It is of interest
to the merchant and to the manufacturer, the question of eliminat-
ing of business waste.
HE city department stores are like great machines run by
systematic method, and on account of the adoption of a per-
fect system which is necessary to success, they go on steadily ex-
panding, and men in various trades wonder whether they are going
to be swallowed up in the great department store vortex, or whether
they will survive.
The small piano dealer naturally feels somewhat nervous when
HE majority of business men to-day are keenly alive to the
he views the huge advertising which can be carried on by the de-
importance of saving in certain directions. They try to
partment stores, amounting to an expense outlay which would be
watch carefully the cost of creating goods and selling them, and yet
suicidal for him to undertake.
notwithstanding all of this, there is in many instances a serious
There is no question but that system in organization has a waste going on all the time. Eternal vigilance is necessary to
decided advance over disorganized conditions, and it cannot be
business independence. To-day it is an absolute necessity to know
denied that there are changes going on in all lines of trade which
the exact cost of creating goods in any line of trade, and the cost
T