Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW, OCTOBER, 19W
piano dealers are taking it as it comes
and that 1,000 new outlets are neces-
sary to carry pianos to handle the
power of the industry's development.
W
HEN the noise of piano
jubilence gets around —
140,000 pianos for 1940;
hundreds of product scan-
ners for additional goods for chains
and other stores, instantly peg pianos as
desirable, and for market investiga
tion. Some will say "yes" and others
will say "no' but the result regardless
of individual decisions, an increase in
mass retail competition to present
dealers, who at all times in the past
have considered their competition "too
much" whether it embraced one dealer
or a dozen. Dealers do not make a pro-
jection of possible piano consumption
in their cities, and fight for their share
. . . competition is always in terms of
the number of Mr. Bascoms. But the
"merchandisers" know what is being
sold, and how much more can be sold,
and when they pick up a new line, they
know how much they will sell; what
percentage of this can be taken away
from present dealers, and what per-
centage of it will be sales developed by
their own stores.
T
HESE "merchandisers" dont
care what is sold. If the quota
of a store in Akron, Ohio is
$ 1 5 0 , 0 0 0 , no one cares
whether it is on hair pins, harness,
musical instruments or canned string
beans. No one tells the manager that
he must sell so much of this or that;
when pianos go in they can be ignored
or sold in big quantities, depending
upon PUBLIC BUYING. These stores
do not tell the public that they ought
to own a piano, but they will stand
ready to sell pianos to the public when
they want to buy them. They are sup-
ply depots for public wants, and con-
sider it time wasted to promote any-
thing. They march in step with con-
sumption of products, and their huge
volume and profits come from supply-
ing the wants and needs of the public.
whereas the piano dealer must pro-
mote what he is selling or go out of
business.
I
T is complimentary to the piano
business for "merchandisers" to
"take up" pianos, for it proves a
staple market, yet piano men
won't like it because it means whittling
down of the number of present piano
prospects and the need for increased
piano promotion by dealers who won't
have the personal resources to catch
all their own apples as they fall from
the trees. When there is too much hol-
lering about piano shortage, the con-
ditions get noised around, and it is a
tip off to the "we boys" with the re-
sult that new factories are started on
O.P.M. and then production and whole-
sale conditions become pot-shotted by
outfits that care nothing for gradual,
sound development of an industry and
are only concerned "with getting it
while the getting's good." So it is a
dangerous period when constant reit-
eration of piano growth is constantly
presented and it would be wise to soft-
pedal such promotion. No piano is
purchased at retail because the indus-
try is surging ahead in jumps of from
25% to 40% "over last year." Anyone
who has picked berries knows the fal-
lacy of hollering to others about the
amount of fruit where he is picking.
T
HE industry still needs more
new dealers, especially in the
smaller towns, but this is the
work for piano mfrs. to se-
lect and appoint, in a constant gradual
development, and not a general stam-
pede. It is probable that there are not
over 200 piano dealers left in the U.
S-, men who are exclusively pianos.
For example, a dealer doing $90,000,
could have from $15,000 to $65,000
on pianos, depending upon the per-
centage of sales in radio, records,
phonographs, band instruments, re-
frigerators, washers, organs, electron-
ic instruments, photo supplies and
cameras, and other misc. articles.
$90,000 is a nice substantial volume