Presto

PRESTO
presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT -
• Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
merclal 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 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., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, JULY 4. 1925.
LET THEM SELL PIANOS
It is folly to set up a hue-and-cry about
"bait advertising" in the piano business unless
the conditions, character and policy of the ad-
vertisers are understood and weighed against
any seeming disregard of the ethics of busi-
ness. No man, or body of men, whatever they
may call themselves, are competent to criti-
cize the purposes of a piano house merely
upon a reading of the printed word. It re-
quires an under-the-skin knowledge of the
piano business, and its varying difficulties, to
fully measure the right or wrong of an adver-
tisement in the local newspaper.
When a critical onlooker sees what seems
like a very astounding offer of "fine" pianos
for little money, he is apt to conclude that
there must be something wrong about the
advertiser. It looks to him almost as if he
had discovered a "fence," where something
like stolen goods are concealed, or where
paste diamonds are being offered for the genu-
ine thing.
But it is more likely that the environment
of the advertiser is such that his public has
been taught to believe that pianos are cheap
things and that the price is of little conse-
quence and the time-payments even of still
smaller importance. It is competition run
wild, and the merchant who wants to do busi-
ness must for the time, realize that he, too,
is in Rome where the Romans are doing
things in their own way.
The piano dealer must sell pianos or he must
close up his shop. That much is certainly ob-
vious. If he is a fair-minded man he will sell
pianos that are as good as he can afford for
the price. And he must "meet competition."
But he must sell pianos. And the piano manu-
facturer, who may prefer that his represen-
tatives get large prices for the instruments he
makes, nevertheless wants his representatives
to sell pianos. All the talk about "bait" and
such things is well enough, but it must have
reason behind it. It must not take on the
complexion of the Volstead act. The dealer
July 4, 1925.
who indulges in startling advertising to catch expect to get. That is the something the spe-
trade must not be classed with criminals, or cial sale offers and, in communities where
threatened with arrest. He is selling his own pianos have sold very slowly, we have known
goods and is trying to make an honest profit. of special sales which have resulted in more
If his advertisements catch more attention deliveries in two weeks than might, under or-
than some other kind, then don't let us charge dinary circumstances, have been made in six
him with casting imitation flies to lure the months' time.
innocent minnows. Usually the minnows are
When times are dull, and stagnation seems
more likely to turn out sharks, anyway, and to threaten, it is not a bad idea to apply the
will swallow the bait, hook and sinker, leav- stimulation of a well conducted special sale.
ing the fisherman with the freight and cart- But don't do it too often.
age to pay.
Don't let us worry too much just now. So
Radio manufacturers and dealers seem to
long as the very foremost music houses per- agree that a slump has overtaken the newest
sist in advertising grand pianos for $300, and industry. As a rule the music dealers do not
at "nothing down, three years to pay," don't seem to be excited in the matter, because most
let us convict the smaller dealers with de- of them have had no share in radio selling.
scending to "bait" advertising, to the ruination The manufacturers of receiving sets have not
of the big fellows. Let them all sell all the been alert in locating their trade representa-
pianos they can legitimately and at a profit. tives.
* * *
The "bait" won't hurt the pianos any. They
will be just as "fine" as ever, and last even
If every retail piano dealer would start a
longer.
special selling campaign, determined to sell
a fixed number of instruments between now
and, say, September first, this summer would
SPECIAL SALES
be
a good one.
In most lines of business the retailers,
* * *
while they may stimulate sales by local adver-
There is marked activity in the demand for
tising in which the "bait" is cut prices, have
organs
of all kinds for public places. The organ
no such opportunity or advantage as the piano
department
is no longer a sideline with a large
trade possesses in the special sale. Properly
number
of
houses.
conducted, with every fairness to the public
* :;: *
and the merchant and manufacturer, the spe-
The
piano
action
manufacturers report a
cial sale serves as a sort of cleaning up, or
marked
increase
in
orders
and output. Nothing
renewing process.
could
more
positively
tell
of
a general advance in
It is a kind of laxative by which clogging of
the
piano
itself.
the commercial system may be remedied or
* * *
prevented. And while, unless conducted with
To
find
cause
of
complaint in the loss of a
judgment and good business effort, the special
sale
is
to
be
like
the
man who refuses to earn
piano sale may be harmful, when well done
a
living
because
he
failed to fall heir to a
it is in every sense legitimate and as beneficial
fortune.
to the public as to the store.
When the average store in most lines of
business becomes overstocked the merchant
may find himself, as a result, short of money
with which to meet his current obligations.
From the Files of Presto
This is bound to be so if business drops below
normal or proves disappointing to expecta-
(July 4, 1695.)
We are glad to hear, and likewise glad to announce,
tions. And, as a rule, there is no other way
the Weaver Organ & Piano Co. has decided to
out of it, at once speedy and satisfactorily that
run their works thirteen hours each working day,
until further notice.
profitable.
Mr. E. V. Church returned from the Northwest
In the piano business, the special sale is yesterday.
Mr. Church and Mr. Northrup, manager
easily applied by way of relief. There are of the Emerson Co., expect to go on a fishing trip
Wisconsin within a day or two.
men of experience, and expert in piano selling, to About
$4,000 is to be expended in the erection of
who make the special sale their particular the new addition to the Ann Arbor Organ Co.'s plant.
New dry-kiln and a new seventy-five horse-power
study. They will "put on" the sale, from start engine
are to be put in. The company has decided
to finish, without a minute's help or a word of to increase its capital stock to $50,000.
A report comes to us that an organ factory is to
suggestion from the merchant, and guarantee
be established at Columbus, Indiana.
results. Nor does the special sale necessarily
Mein Herr Ludocio Cavalli has been holding a
mean any sacrifice of the fair profits of busi- reception this week. Among those who have called
upon him were Thos. F. G. Foisy and T. Nadean,
ness. It more properly means a clearing out of Montreal; H. R. Moore, of the A. B. Chase Co.,
of the "store keepers," and getting rid of the of Norwalk, Ohio; Mr. Paulsen, of the Century Piano
Co., Minneapolis; Mr. R. J. Mason, of the Sterling
accumulation of trade-ins and repossessions Co., Derby, Conn., and Mr. Geo. P. Bent, of Chicago.
that often clutter up the warerooms where
floor space might better be given over to new
stock and better sellers.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
Every piano dealer has a list of prospects.
Often most of the prospects who will not lis-
(From Presto, July 6, 1905.)
ten seriously to the local salesman, will con-
The Fourth is over and we are again convinced
sider the proposition of a new-comer who puts the constitution guarantees every piano man liberty
the pursuit of prospects.
his message in different terms and from a in The
Kalamazoo (Mich.) Telegram offers a piano
fresh angle.
to the winner of a contest in counting that paper's
subscribers in the United States. Another fly-speck
Quick sales are often made to very slow puzzle.
people. Many a dealer's neighbors, who have
It is a mistake for the trade papers to discuss the
question. Not one of them has more
for a year or more been "thinking about" buy- circulation
than half the circulation even of Ladies' Home Jour-
ing will buy at once of a special sales pro- nal, which only claims a million.
As showing one side of the influence of the late
moter who puts his proposition with the un-
W. W. Kimball it is interesting to note that several
derstanding that his work in the community of the "Governor's" good stories are still going the
ends within a week or two. Most of us are rounds of the press. A Michigan newspaper recently
contained one of them in the form of an advertise-
looking for something more than we really ment by a local piano dealer.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
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