Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW, FEBRUARY, 19W
if there is anybody in this room whose or-
ganization is not a member of the Merchants'
Association, please, before you go out, see
that you sign up and get your shoulder to
the wheel.
Should Be Cooperation Between N. P. N. A.
and N. A. M. M.
Now, assuming that a stronger Merchants'
Association has been created, it will provide
for closer cooperation between the Merchants'
Association and the Manufacturers' Associa-
tion. You have seen what the manufacturers
are continually demanding something lower
to sell. They say the reason for it is because
the public demands it, but why does the public
demand it? The public demands it because
many dealers and some manufacturers who
operate retail establishments are continually
placing before the public ads that are ridic-
ulous to us who know what conditions are,
offering pianos, so-called, at ridiculous prices.
It is a vicious cycle all the way through. The
manufacturers, I think, as a whole, would like
to maintain their products up to a standard.
It is difficult if dealers are trying to maintain
or the fact that you did well last year.
has got to be in cash!"
It
A Little More Pride Needed
"Now, I think you gentlemen agree with
me in this, probably. The Association has
tried to keep our industry in the sunshine of
successful business, and you, as individuals,
are trying to do the same thing. However,
there are still some pianos that nobody could
manufacture. In fact, if we, as manufacturers,
are the parents, figuratively speaking, of pianos
that go out in the world here, I think that
Speakers at Eastern Sales Clinic—1. to r.—Ray Erlandson. J. A. McClanahan and R. A. Huff; L. H. Selz, S. C. Wolfe. Earl Rice, F. H. Galperan, C. Albert
Jacob. Jr., Ray Fagan and John H. Gettell
have been able to accomplish in the last few
years by concerted efforts, and there is no
question but what, if the efforts of the mer-
chants \i ire added to that, concretely, what we
could accomplish would be multiplied many
fold. There is no question about it.
As a result, there would come closer co-
operation between individual manufacturer and
individual dealer. The dealer always talks
about the effect that public demand has on the
way he does his business. For instance, I
have heard dealers recently bemoan the fact
that when Mrs. Jones comes in to buy a piano,
she wants the cheapest that she can get, and
she is always "chiseling" on price. Now, at
the risk of possibly hurting somebody's feel-
ings unintentionally, I will say this:
Chiseling
Believe me, the manufacturer runs up against
that same problem with dealers. The dealers
the same product down to a price. It is hard
to reconcile the two. In fact, the one stabil-
izing influence in our industry is the fact that
there is one outstanding and a few other man-
ufacturers who are conscientiously maintaining
their product up to a standard and not suc-
cumbing to the continual plea to build it down
to a price. Gentlemen, that is something that
we can be thankful for—that there are still
some manufacturers who are maintaining that
standard, because if it wasn't for that, there
would be chaos."
Getting back to his subject on "Pride in our
Industry," Mr. Jacob stated: "Pride itself is
static. It has no momentum and you don't
get anywhere with it. It is up to us to keep
up the effort so that we can continue to be
proud of what goes on in our industry in the
future. We can't cash in on pride in past
performance. You can't pay bills with pride
the sanctity is somewhat abused at times with
some of the pianos that I have seen. But
also, there are some retail methods thst we
can't be proud of. I don't think we can be
proud of some of the types of advertising—
"bait" advertising, these "balance due" letters
and crazy allowances. There are a whole lot
of things we can't be proud of, but still, there
are some things we can be proud of.
"There is no question but what, as an in-
dustry, we are giving probably bettor values
than we ever gave before to the public. We
can be proud of our publicity campaign, which
has created a getter public acceptance of pianos
than we ha^ve ever had before.
"Think back a few years before that pub-
licity work was started, and you will recall
that we could look through every magazine
published in the United States, practically ev-
ery newspaper, and never see anything relating
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