Presto

PRESTO
presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 407 South Dearborn
Street, Old Colony Building, Chicago, 111.
C. A. D A N I E L L and F R A N K D. A B B O T T
-
-
Editors
Telephones. Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), " P R E S T O , " 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 extra charge in United States
possessions, Cuba and Mexico. Rates for advertising on
application.
Items of news and other matter are solicited and if
of general interest to the music trade will be paid for
at space rates. Usually piano merchants or salesmen
in the smaller cities are the best occasional corre-
spondents, and their assistance is invited.
Forms close at noon every Thursday. News mat-
ter should be in not later than eleven o'clock on the
same day. Advertising copy should be in hand before
Tuesday, five p. m., to insure preferred position. Full
page display copy should be in hand by Monday noon
preceding publication day. Want advs. for current
week, to insure classification, must not be later than
Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 407 So.
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 1923.
SUFFICIENT UNTO ITSELF
It's a very simple proposition. If a man
makes his living by selling pianos, and its
requisites, he has his hands full and he needs
all the energy and versatility there may be in
him to keep his competitors from closing the
sales.
If he is so fortunate as to represent a fine
line of instruments, the way is easier than if
he depends wholly upon low prices to get busi-
ness. But no matter what pianos he carries
in his store, no matter how good a salesman
he thinks he is, he must direct his energies
and efforts to selling pianos. Unless he is
equipped to conduct a general music store,
he can not make a success of it if he permits
himself to divide his time and his thought
with some special lines other than pianos,
which may be remotely associated with the
music trade. It may be even better to sell
something, as a side line, that is totally dis-
associated with the things of music, if any
pot boiler is needed with which to fill in.
There has never been a time when piano
dealers were not solicited to take on some
side line. A good many years ago it was the
bicycle. Many timid members of the music
trade appeared to be afraid that the bicycle
would drive the piano from off the earth. But
the bicycle passed and the piano has grown
stronger steadily. Then came golfing. The
timorous kind of dealers thought it couldn't
be possible that men and women could drive
the little ball over the lawn and still have a
heart for music and piano. But out-door golf
whetted the appetite for indoor music.
And then came chugging along the automo-
bile. It would kill the love for music, and the
world would soon have ears only for the mo-
tor horn. But the effect of the family car
has been to create a keener desire for music
in the home.
And now comes along another half-devel-
oped wonder, in which there is very little of
commercial value by which the average piano
dealer can increase his business. It would be
better to put in a stock of crockery ware, in
which is the virtue of practical service.
But to return to the first proposition, the
piano trade is in itself a large one which de-
mands all of any man's time if he is to make
a success of it. And the stakes of one piano
sale are often bigger than the profits in an
entire turn-over of the very small things
which often are not worthy of the time of a
man big enough, to be a successful piano
salesman.
The very old and too much quoted admoni-
tion that the shoemaker stick to his last seems
to fit the condition. Sell pianos and do it so
wholeheartedly that there will be no time for
uncertainties and experiments.
And, in selling playerpianos—which is the
same thing—there necessarily follows one of.
the best of side lines, and one that sells itself
—the music roll, which no piano store can
well do without, for it is a vital part of the
player-piano.
FIRST PIANO STORE
Historians do not seem to agree on the
precise location of the first piano store in this
country. Usually it has been credited to low-
er Broadway, New York. Always it is cor-
rectly described as one of the first business
enterprises of the Astor family. The open-
ing of the Astor store is declared to have
been the beginning of the commercial career
of the now famous property owners, whose
wealth is distributed throughout both hemi-
spheres. And this being true, what degree of
credit may not be given to the piano as one
of the important factors in founding the
princely individual fortunes of the nation and
the world ?
Nor must it be overlooked that even now
there is an Astor piano, as well as many As-
tor hotels, including the quaint hostelry and
curio house oh Mackinaw Island, where one
of the original Astor pianos may still be seen
in the room devoted to the relics of the Hud-
son Bay company pioneers. It may not be
of importance to the trade of today, but since
it is as easy for history to be right as wrong,
there is some interest in the fact that when
the original Astor brought over the first
commercial piano's, he opened his shop on
what is now Pearl Street, in• New York, and
not on Broadway. A recent historian of the
metropolis tells of it by quoting from the
"Daily Advertiser" of January 3, 1789, in the
following advertisement:
"John Jacob Astor, at Number 81 Queen
Street (Pearl), next door but one to the
Friends' Meeting House, has for sale an as-
sortment of Pianofortes of the newest con-
struction, made by the best makers in Lon-
don, which he will sell on reasonable terms.
He gives cash for all kinds of furs and has
for sale a lot of Canada Beaver coating, Rac-
coon skins, etc."
From which it may be seen that in that
remote day of the first piano store, the same
spirit of terms and exchange actuated the
publicity man. It was, even then, the "reason-
able terms" that awakened the readiness to
invest, and we are told that Mr. Astor also
accepted animal skins as part payment for the
instruments of the "best makers in London."
Usually, however, it has been customary to
read that the pianos sold by Mr. Astor were
from the factory of the pioneer's father in
London. In any event, it is significant that,
even when John Jacob Astor hung out his
August 25, 1923
sign on old Queen Street, now
Pearl, pianos had already been
country, in a very small way.
only 34 years later a Boston
established, the name of which
of the most distinguished and
lists.
narrow little
made in this
Further, that
industry was
is today one
active in the
INDUSTRIAL PRIDE
It used to be said that the character of the
people of a city or town could be told by the
number and appearance of its churches. To-
day it is nearer right to say that the index to
a city's life and civilization is in the local
pride-producing character of.its great indus-
tries.
The shabby, ill-kept and disorderly factory
is a sign of a lack of the kind of ambition
which usually spells progress and content-
ment. And in the music industry this may
seem to be specially true, because music is
supposed to represent the spirit of refine-
ment and harmony as well as of material
progress.
Not so very many years ago there were very
few piano factories of a kind to suggest civic or
neighborhood pride. As a rule, pianos were
made in dingy lofts, in the crowded sections
of the larger cities. They were the beautiful
issue of almost squalid surroundings, and
they, of course, could not reflect, in any ma-
terial sense, the nature of the purpose to
which they were devoted. But the modern
piano industry is making history of a differ-
ent kind.
In some of the striving midwest cities of
today some of the most modern and attrac-
tive factories are those of the piano manufac-
turers. Still more, perhaps, the same fac-
. tories are the direct cause of the existence
of retail business structures which contribute
to the growing dignity and impressiveness of
the principal streets. Such a structure and
business is referred to in this week's Presto
as being a credit to the fast-growing city of
Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
It would be impossible to find anywhere in
this country a better-equipped music house
than that of the Packard Piano Co. Nor is
there anywhere a piano factory, or any other,
for that matter, which displays a better ap-
preciation of the influence of beautiful environ-
ment than may be realized by a visit to the
Packard industry.
The flower-bordered
walks and touches of nature's cultivated col-
ors are all about, and the outlook from the
windows of the workers is just such as to
convince that the Packard slogan, "tf there's
no harmony in the factory there wi'l be none
in the piano," is not platitudinous, but as sin-
cere as the guaranty of the famous instru-
ment itself.
'\nd there are other piano factories, and
other retail home establishments of piano
factories, similarly suggestive of local pride
and widespread progress, to which the same
Presto writer will give similar attention in
succeeding issues. No reading matter in the
music trade papers could be more helpful or
instructive to the retail piano dealers every-
where.
There arc three infallible requisites to successful
piano selling and two of them arc: Don't put off
seeing the prospect till tomorrow. And the third is
like unto it.
The piano salesman who pauses in his discourse to
draw the prospect's attention to a passing circus has
missed his calling. He should be selling pink
lemonade.
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/