Presto

PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
Telephones: Chicago Tel. Co., Harrison 234; Auto. Tel. Co., Automatic 61-70S.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code).
"PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago. Illinois,
%
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. ; No «xtrm
•uarge in U. 3. Dossessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Rate«fe»Three dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertions.
Six dollars per inch p*«r month, less twenty-five per cent on yearly contracts. Ths
Presto does not sell Its editorial space. Payment is not accepted for articles of de-
scriptive character or other matter appearing In the news columns. Business notices
will be Indicated by the word "advertisement" in accordance with the Act of August
84, 1912.
Rates for advertising in the Tear Book issue and Export Supplements of The
Presto will be ma.de known upon application. The Presto Year Book and Export
issues have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical
Instrument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely and
•ffectually all the houses handling musical instruments of both the Eastern and West-
ern hemispheres.
The Presto Buyeis' Guide is the only reliable index to the American Musical
Instruments; it analyzes all Pianos and Player-Pianos, gives accurate estimates W
their values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
$ Items of news, photographs and other matter of general interest to the must*
trades are invited and when accepted will be paid for. Address all communications to
Prttto Publishing Co., Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1920.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE NEWS OF THE
TRADE—ALL KINDS OF NEWS EXCEPT PERSONAL SLANDER
AND STORIES OF PETTY MISDEEDS BY INDIVIDUALS. PRESTO
WILL PRINT THE NAMES OF CORRESPONDENTS WHO 9END IN
"GOOD STUFF" OR ARE ON THE REGULAR STAFF. DON'T SEND
ANY PRETTY SKETCHES, LITERARY ARTICLES OR "PEN-PIC-
TURES." JUST PLAIN NEWS ABOUT THE TRADE—NOT ABOUT
CONCERTS OR AMATEUR MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS, BUT
ABOUT THE MEN WHO MAKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND
THOSE WHO SELL THEM. REPORTS OF NEW STORES AND
THE MEN WHO MAKE RECORDS AS SALESMEN ARE GOOD. OF-
TEN THE PIANO SALESMEN ARE THE BEST CORRESPONDENTS
BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE TO READ AND HAVE
THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FINDING OUT WHAT IS "DOING" IN
THE TRADE IN THEIR VICINITY. SEND IN THE N E W S -
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
PIANO PROFITS
In all the discussion of "profiteering" it is certain that none of
the stigma attaches to the piano business in any of its branches. It
has from the first been a stereotyped statement that piano men do
not often get very rich. There are a few of them, in both the industry
and trade, who may lay claim to an abundance and plenty to spare.
But the multi-millionaires do not swarm in the piano business, and
the average financial statement doesn't at all resemble that of a
national bank.
Profiteering is a species of robbery, wherein the helpless public
foots the bills. It is a species of hold-up on a scale so large that the
law fails to reach up to it. The men whose money, time, skill and
brains are invested in making or selling musical instruments have
had no part in the creation of fortunes by means of unfair profits.
During the time when the new millionaires projected themselves into
the world of industry, by making things the war department wanted,
or seemed to want, the manufacturers of musical instruments were
cutting down their activities and making the sacrifices demanded of
all patriotic citizens. Very few of them realized a dollar by the route
of the profiteer, and then the net returns were not beyond those of a
moderate income.
And now that conditions have made it absolutely necessary that
the prices of pianos, and other things musical, go up, the manufac-
turers are adding to the old figures just about enough to cover their
increased cost of production. Within a week three piano manufactur-
ers, of considerable importance, have been asked what the average
profit of their instruments was. One replied that he was making a
profit of $40 on every instrument. Another said that his profit on
a playerpiano is $50; and the third said that he aimed at a margin
of $65. In days of long ago—as it now seems—it was common to hear
piano manufacturers tell that they were satisfied with a profit of $10,
or even $5, per piano. It was at the time when the industry lacked
April 17, 1920.
stability and was threatened with a riot of the kind of recklessness
that stampedes credits and scares the banks and other sources of
financial co-operation. Today it is not the same industry, and the
men engaged in it are of a different kind. The piano industry was
never so stable as now. The investment was never so large and the
foundations of the source of production were never so substantial.
But even now, the average profit in the piano industry is still too
small. It requires so much greater investment to produce, it demands
so much more skill, and exacts so much greater application than ever
before, and the character of the instruments has changed so greatly
that the margin is, as a rule, too small. The same condition applies
to the dealers, and perhaps with greater emphasis. It is no longer
customary for the dealers to induce sales by offering sacrifices which
once meant ultimate ruin—in many instances. The old systems of
selling have faded out. The average piano merchant is now doing
business on business lines. And yet there are too many retailers who
do not seem to realize that selling pianos is a business in which every
transaction is a closed incident as soon as the sale is made. There
will be very few "repeat" orders. The profit of each sale is all the
gain that comes from that transaction and, unless the profit is ade-
quate, the sale may represent a liability instead of a gain.
When a piano dealer sells an instrument to a well-to-do citizen,
he may be delivering his goods to one of the fat-walleted "profiteers"
whose wealth has been so inflated that the piano's price is inconse-
quential. Should the hard-working piano man feel any obligation to
throw away his own modest profits so that his neighbor may be again
the gainer? In any event, the dealer knows that the factory from
which he secures his stock is pushed to fill orders. He knows that
every instrument that is sold without adequate profit will be hard to
replace. Isn't it the place of common sense to keep the instrument,
unless the selling-price be such as to justify its proportion of the ex-
pense of doing business, and then a little more? We think so. And
we don't like to hear piano dealers talk as if they were rolling in pros-
perity because they find sales easily and are realizing profits which
might do in some other line, where the customers come back for more
every month, every week or every day.
There is no danger of any profiteering in the piano business.
There is no piano manufacturer getting ready to retire because of
overburdened wealth, and the piano merchants are not winning wealth
in sufficient quantities to pay the public debt by their surplus profit
taxes. Now that the exigencies of the times have forced the piano busi-
ness into something like a plane of prices within reason, why not hold
it there? And when the change comes, by which all business will
return to normal conditions, this one of piano selling will be where
it should have been a quarter-century ago.
ANOTHER SELLING SYSTEM
Nothing in the trade could be more interesting than the changes
which at long intervals take place in the system of piano selling. In
the early days it was the "three years' system." Pianos were sold
on installments that gave an aggregate of three years in which pur-
chasers could complete their payments. Later came the weekly,
monthly or quarterly payments. Meantime there was the plan of
renting the instrument and permitting a fixed portion of the rent-
money to apply on the purchase price. And finally came the dollar-
down-and-same-now-and-then plan, which endded in "youu pay the
cartage and nothing down!" Of course chaos followed and the piano
business threatened to bankrupt all who ventured into it.
Today there appears still another system. Happily it is advocated
by a class of piano houses whose standing gives all the assurance
necessary that the system is good for both the public and the trade.
It is announced in Chicago by the two great houses of The Cable
Company and Lyon & Healy. The proposition of the latter fine old
establishment, as set forth in the daily newspapers, is as follows:
Don't move your old piano. Let us give you a due bill for it, applicable
at any time toward the purchase of a new instrument. We will come and
get your old instrument.
Of course the idea is for the owner of the old piano to sell the
instrument to the music house and select the new one at any time
later. It saves the expense of moving the piano, and it insures to the
householder a good price for the perhaps useless upright—the "dead
piano"—for which a player-piano may be had in exchange. The two
great Chicago houses advertised the plan simultaneously last Tues-
day, and the common sense of the proposition must appeal to people
who approach May 1st and its exodus with nomadic uneasiness.
It is a new piano selling system that seems to have peculiar
possibilities because it is possible only to houses of the utmost re-
sponsibility and widely-known integrity. It is a plan impossible to
the "was-and-now" kind of piano houses. The cut price and slaughter
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