Presto

PR£STO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234. Private Phones to all De-
partments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code), " P R E S T O , " Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, a t the Post Office, Chicago, Illinois,
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable in advance. No extra
charge in U. S. possessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico.
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., 407 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
Advertising Rates:—Five dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertions.
Complete schedule of rates for standing cards and special displays will be furnished
on request. The Presto does not sell its editorial space. Payment is not accepted for
articles of descriptive character or other matter appearing in the news columns. Busi-
ness notices will be indicated by the word "advertisement" In accordance with the
Act of August 24, 1912.
Rates for advertising in Presto Year Book Issue and Kxport Supplements of
Presto will be made known upon application. Presto Year Book and Export issues
have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical in-
strument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely and
effectually all the houses handling musical instruments of both the Eastern and West-
ern hemispheres.
Presto Buyers' Guide is the only reliable index to the American Pianos and
Player-Pianos, it analyzes all instruments, classifies them, gives accurate estimates
of their value and contains a directory of Iheir manufacturers.
Items of news and other matter of general interest to the music trades are in-
vited and when accepted will be paid for. All communications should be addressed to
Presto Publishing Co., 407 So. Dearborn Stregt. Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 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 SEND 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 FNTERTAINMENTS, 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 NEWS-
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
PIANO PROMOTION
The day has gone by when a person of average intelligence
could have any argument to present against the efficacy of advertis-
ing. Some of the brightest minds of today are devoted to so adjusting
words to ideas as to tell the world what it wants, or needs, in as
small newspaper space as possible. It is said that the highest salaries
are paid to the wizards of words in printer's ink. There is one Amer-
ican publication that will not accept display advertising for less than
thirteen pages, aggregating in cost more than $100,000. We need
hardly say that the publication in mind is not a music trade paper.
Most trade papers in any line will accept even a single page and,
while the result may easily exceed that of the monopolistic story
paper, the cost will be vastly less.
But the point just now is that trade paper advertising is not
understood even in the business world. The story paper, with fancy
covers and well drawn pictures, boasts of what the average mind
can readily understand. That is "circulation." A paper that really
has a sale, or circulation, of a million or more copies, makes a clear
appeal to the business mind. The representative of such a paper can
easily convince any manufacturer that space is desirable and valuable.
Usually the consideration of quality in circulation is not taken into
account. It is enough that the presses must run for weeks to produce
the vast editions. Who reads the paper, what class of minds it
appeals to, what proportion of its readers may be interested in the
article advertised, is seldom even thought of.
Nor are the specific arguments associated with the million cir-
culation considered. It is enough that the publication has the circu-
lation, whether because of its intrinsic literary value or because it
delivers many times its price in good white paper covered with pretty
pictures. Nor will anyone deny that such a paper presents great
possibilities for some kinds of manufactured articles. But we are
interested particularly in pianos.
Can it be said that an investment of $100,000—the minimum—in
any million circulation, or even more, represents as good a piano in-
September 4, 1920.
vestment as ten per cent of that sum invested in papers that appeal
directly to the class of people—the actual dealers and salesmen—who
get out and meet the people who buy pianos?
Pianos are sold one at a time. We are talking about the retail
end of it, which is, after all, the end that advertising is for—eventu-
ally. The piano dealers are the advertisers for the retail end of the
piano business. They advertise the pianos they sell every time they
meet a possible prospect. With them the piano which is the "leader"
is the only great piano on earth. It may be a Knabe, a Steinway, a
Chickering, a Bradbury, a Starr, a Packard, or any other of the pianos
with which the world is familiar by reason of the retailers' hard
work. And whatever the piano, the dealer or his salesman is advertis-
ing it with every spoken word and every squeak of his hard working
shoes.
Think it over. Isn't it so? And if it is so, isn't the dealer the
real, live advertiser of the piano? And if he is, what is the printed
word that is worth the manufacturer's money and his time? It is the
paper that goes straight to the dealer and his salesmen. It is the good
trade paper, written and conducted by men who know what piano
selling means. It is not the paper written for artists or for piano man-
ufacturers, ft is the dealer's paper. A circulation of 5,000 that goes
direct to the dealers who do the word-of-mouth advertising is better
for the piano than million circulation that can by no possibility reach,-
in its great list of readers, more than one per cent of the kind of
people who are interested in pianos. And even then the appeal is not
of the kind that "does business" but, too often, stimulates the kind of
competitive "knocking" that most retail piano men dread.
The subject is a large one. It is often discussed in the piano
warerooms, but perhaps never in the piano factories. Advertising of
all kinds is good. But some kinds of advertising are vastly better, as
an investment, then other kinds of advertising.
SALESMAN WHO KNOWS
Sales are lost every day because of lacking knowledge of pro-
duction. Without it the salesman often finds it impossible to present
the clinching argument. The other salesman, who is up in his busi-
ness, does the profitable selling. It is not enough to possess the gift
of gab, or the facility to employ suggestion and persuasion, how-
ever glossed over and whatever the fertility in generalization.
The prospective piano or playerpiano buyer is very often sus-
picious. He knows a little about this and that piano but wants to
know more. The salesman who can not dissipate that suspicion by
the presentation of facts, born of positive knowledge, is not fortified.
The buyer wants to know. He profits by what the informed sales-
man tells him, and by that profit the house is made to profit, also.
Most complaints about pianos, from people who have closed the pur-
chase, are due to misunderstanding of the very things the salesmen
should have understood and given information about. The average
customer needs enlightenment. If the salesman fails to go into de-
tails he is not doing his best work.
The salesman who isn't quite sure whether the case is of ma-
hogany or walnut; whether the keys are the finest ivory or something
else; whether the action is one of the great ones; whether the piano,
in short, is a high grade or a commercial instrument, is not sufficiently
up in his work to do much good. Selling pianos, whether as em-
ploye or as owner of the store, is a matter of education as well as of
natural skill and industry. The salesman who doesn't dig below the
surface can not hope to get very far along in the road to success in
the piano business.
LESSON IS PLAIN
The "Neighborhood" Store is the subject of an article in the
Gulbransen Bulletin and in discussing a situation the writer makes a
plain suggestion to piano dealers in the business sections of cities
who complain of the activities of the so-called neighborhood stores.
The "neighborhood" store that disturbs the dealers limits its
music goods activities to selling talking machine records and player
music rolls. And, according to the Bulletin, "the complaining dealers
argue that the merchant who sells the player 'makes' the roll business
and should have the exclusive privilege of selling the rolls."
The obvious thing is that there is an inducement to neighbor-
hood stores to carry stocks of player music rolls. Wherever there is
demand there will be supply sooner or later. While expressing an
unwillingness to get into any argument of this nature the Bulletin
asks permission to say, that "neighborhood stores or song shops are
likely to become more numerous unless some of the large player
dealers give more attention to their roll departments. We still find a
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