Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
MEDALS AWARDED THE. MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
Volume 99. Number 12
December y 1940
Established 1879. and published monthly by Henderson
Publications, Inc., at Radio City. 1270 Sixth Ave., New York,
U.S.A. 1 Year $2. Two Years $3. Carleton Chace. Executive
Editor. Also Publishers of Radio-Television Journal & The
Talking Machine World. "Musical Merchandise" and
"Parts" for wholesalers.
Only trade publication in the piano business.
Awarded five medals for "the best" in journalism.
2,732nd Issue
Sit tUi
I
ET'S congratulate each other upon
a good piano job for 1940 of
• 140,000 pianos which with the
' additional sale of 60,000 used
instruments makes 200,000 sales over
all. New ones averaging $300 times
140,000 is $42,000,000, plus 60,000
sh's at $80 is $4,800,000 — roughly
$47,000,000. This seems small, split
among 3,000 dealers, yet the number
of pianos—140,000—sounds sensale-
sational.
N
EW pianos put into arithme-
tic, averages 47 sales per
dealer per year, at $300,
giving $ 1 4 , 0 0 0 volume,
which at 20% net profit, is $2,800 or
$230 monthly. Here is the unique fact
of the industry doing but $42,000,000
in new sales (small in comparison to
radio, house furnishings, refrigerators,
jewelry, motor cars, etc.) but the in-
take and profit per dealer is one of the
highest in the U.S.
A
NOTHER 1,000 piano dealers
would not dilute much the
i per dealer sales or profit for
• 1941, for it wouldn't be sur-
prising that piano production, barring
a screwball incident, would hit 175,000.
This sounds a little high, in view of
labor, space, organization and supply
sources, but no one yet knows "who
buys pianos?" nor what annual income
bracket groups give us the most sales.