Music Trade Review

mm Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org THE [HMC TIRADE 3/OL. LVIII. N o . 25 Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, June 20, 1914 SING$L2EOOCOPPER\EAR.EN ' a Price Maintenance Means Stable Business. T HE advantage of price maintenance is becoming more apparent to wise merchants all the while. For years this publication has persistently advocated the adoption of a one-price system in the retailing of pianos. We have also claimed that one-price could not be universal in national products unless the price were named by the manufacturers themselves. In other words, a standardization of retail prices in the piano trade throughout the land would be absolutely essential before the one-price could become a fixed policy in the national marketing of pianos. Some of the leading piano manufacturers have established this plan of price fixity as a part of iheir business system. More should follow, for the ascendancy of the player-piano has meant thai many used instruments have been taken in as part payment on new pianos and player-pianos. The growth of the player has brought about conditions which must be satisfactorily met else there will be a crumbling of profits. The trade-in problem has become a vital one. In order to approach satisfactory conditions in the vending of pianos we must establish two principles: First, a national policy regarding the valuation of trade ins, and second, retail prices on pianos fixed by the manufacturers. Of course, there are some who have adopted these plans in their business dealings. They have standardized their methods of pricing new pianos as well as trade-ins, and such men stand upon a pedestal of business strength. Their position has elemental soundness. As it stands to-day in many trades the transaction of buying and selling is a contest of wits. This statement would apply broadly to conditions in the piano trade. Some men will place high valuations upon old instruments which they have never seen in order to effect sales. What absurd and unbusiness-like actions! Then, they will advance the prices of their own instruments in many cases to cover the trade-in allowance, a policy which surely does not reflect credit upon the ones adopting it. The present lax system in many trades has created a wide system of cut-throat prices, which in the end does not deceive anyone. New methods of doing business in a thoroughly up-to-date manner are essential to business success. When the one-price is established by the manufacturer the unscrupulous piano merchant will be forced to abandon his policy of the substitution of cheap and inferior products for a standard article. In this way the producer will secure in a larger degree his rights as a manufacturer, and the retail purchaser will have the advantage of protection in so far as price and quality are concerned, and the whole system of bartering and haggling will be done away with. A fund of experience shows the fact that the one-price system has worked out well in many trades, and perhaps no stronger argument could be made in favor of price maintenance than is illustrated in the history of the talking machine business There is a universal pricing of talking machines and supplies to purchasers, and no argument can break down this wall of strength. The public has been educated to the fact that the pricing means precisely what its figures indicates, and it has been easier for salesmen to dispose of machines in this way than under the old system of price haggling. (Continued on page 5.)