Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
REVIEW
THE
VOL. LXXXII1. No. 15
Published Every Saturday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 3S3 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y., Oct. 9, 1926
Single Copies 10 Cent*
92.00 Per Year
Now We Have With Us the Season of
State and County Fairs
Exhibits at Such Events by Retail Music Dealers a Widespread Method of Opening the Fall Selling
Season—A Direct and Economical Means of Developing the Prospect List-—The Successful Exhibit
Always Has as Its Base Direct Demonstration of the Instruments Which Are Shown
HERE is now with us the season of
county and State fairs, annual celebrations
of the harvest season that in their gen-
eral characteristics are as old as civilization
T
through the fair with four or five times that
number of visitors from surrounding territories
and at a cost considerably less than would be
the cost of making a personal survey of the ter-
Clark
Music
Co.
Building
at
New
York
S^ate
Fair
itself. These gatherings, really instituted as an
expression of thanksgiving for bounteous
harvests, have developed both in Europe and
this country to a point where they represent
annual commercial expositions, with manufac-
turers and merchants vying with agriculturists
in the display of their products.
It is doubtful if there is a county or State
fair held in the United States without at least
one or more exhibits of musical instruments and
in many cases these exhibits, particularly where
they include frequent demonstrations, repre-
sent chief centers of activity, for the general
public cannot resist music when that public is in
a holiday spirit. To the dealer who seeks to
maintain contact with the public of his locality
and who is clever enough to devise means for
turning casual visitors into prospects, the local
and State fair offers an exceptional opportunity.
It is no unusual thing for a retailer located
in a town of 10,000 or less to develop contact
Particularly in the case of those instruments
that reproduce music such as the reproducing
piano, the player-piano, the talking machine and
the radio receiver does the fair exhibit offer an
opportunity for demonstrating before the crowd
just what can be accomplished along this line.
The exhibit demonstrations do not in any
sense take the place of regular demonstrations
held in the warerooms, in halls, clubs, churches,
etc., but they do have the effect of reaching
more people at one time than can be reached by
any other less general means. For band and
orchestra instruments, too, the fair presents an
excellent opportunity for effective demonstra-
tion, particularly where the music house has a
band or orchestra made up of members of the
sales organization, or can secure the services
of some outside unit to give frequent concerts
during the period of the fair using those makes
of instruments that are being displayed.
It is generally conceded that a fair exhibit
without arrangements for various demonstra-
tion loses much of its value, for music serves
to draw the crowd and provide the opportunity
ior holding the attention of a fair percentage
until names and addresses and other valuable
prospect data can be secured. There are, how-
ever, those who disagree with the value of the
general demonstration, holding that with the
McCoy's,
Inc.,
Exhibit
at the
Connecticut
State
Fair
ritory, and with results that in the main would
prove quite satisfactory.
3
booths and aisles packed with people the
(Continued on page 4)