The talking machine world (Jan-June 1919)

June 15, 1919 THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD 85 TALKING MACHINE WORLD SERVICE ^ \^ \^ \A \A \A \A \A \A \A \A \A \^ \^ \^ \A \A \^ \^ \A \^ \^ \^ \^ A (lepartment devoted to promoting retail Sales — conducted bt/ Robert Gordon^ Editor's Note— This new department will be devoted exclusively to helping retailers TViic is nr^t n ti'inf^ tn Kp ^nntpnf ii/itV. fliir-v/pr tr-jrlA Nfnu' Editor's Note — This new department will be devoted exclusively to helping retailers in the talking machine industry to solve the merchandising problems with which they may from time to time be confronted. Whenever in doubt or subject to worry, write to Robert Gordon, care of The Talking Machine World, 373 Fourth avenue. New York City. Let him help you out of your difficulties. Robert Gordon, be it said, has under his direction a large coterie cf e>perts, including the complete staffs of The Talking Machine World and Talking Machine World Service. Communications will be treated in confidence if so requested, but in any event you will have at your command the advice and counsel of experts who have specialized in every phase of modern merchandising, and who couple with this a vast practical experience in the talking machine industry. And now that we know each other, here's hoping we're all going to be the best of friends, and that Robert Gordon will prove a wonderful boon to you in the conducting of your business. He can if you will give him half a chance. EACH year $500,000 — yes, nearly a million dollars — is beingspent by manufacturers in the talking machine business on sales literature, window material and dealer helps alone. Mere printing and paper — the mechanics of the business-tools for the dealer to work with. A million dollars — to help you sell the goods they have already sold you. If this sort of material is so valuable, certainly there would be still greater value in furnishing dealers with concrete assistance, in meeting their own problems of merchandising and advertising. The aim of this department is to enable the dealer to use to greater advantage the assistance furnished him by the manufacturer, especially to help him meet his individual problems of advertising and merchandising, in order that he may not only build a large business, but build it upon a solid and substantial foundation. Effective advertising offers a very difficult problem for the dealer. It is an art requiring a high degree of special skill and training in order to obtain maximum results, and generally the dealer finds it impractical to engage a specialist in this iield, or to lay out money for good illustrations, cuts, etc. Likewise, in the domain of merchandising, good ideas, like all things of great value, are scarce and hard to obtain. If an idea is good, it will sell merchandise in Cahfornia as well as in Maine. To meet these two needs of the talking machine industry. The Talking Machine World inaugurates this month two new features: a complete dealer's advertising service, and a dealer's clearing house for merchandising ideas. An announcement of the advertising service appears elsewhere in this issue. The merchandising side of the service will be developed monthly on this page, and also in more complete and detailed form in the advertising service, of which it forms a part. ^ v -J" S]\IOKE is pouring out of the factory chimneys. Day and night, in great, thick clouds, it mounts heavenward and spreads across the industrial sky in giant characters that form a word which the seeing eye can read — a word that portends great changes in conditions— •'PRODUCTION" Clouds, not of war smoke, but peace smoke ; not war production— that is out of the way at last — but peace production — talking machines, records, needles, motors, accessories, a thousand and one things you've been yelling for. The great manufacturers are at it again, 100 per cent. The factories are making smoke. What about you ? Are you burning up the business boulevard with your smoke — or, with your feet on the mantelpiece, are you lolling back in your easy chair smoking a pipe ? This is a seller's market — true enough, but the dealer who is clever enough to keep wearing out his shoe leather instead of the seat of his trousers is doing a whole lot more these days than merely taking orders. He is squeezing every drop of juice out of the present, and at the same time putting stuff away in his cellar against the days to come. There is more than one kind of smoke. There is the heavy, blue kind that trails a benzine buggy struggling up the hillside and means half-baked fuel and wasted energy. Then there is the smoke that follows a big limousine — nearly invisible, but redolent of power and speed. This is not a time to be content with flivver trade. Now. when the "dear public" is fighting to get your few machines away from you — now is the time to go after Mr. and Mrs. Limousine. Now shoot at the big game, on broad avenues and boulevards, your gun loaded with high-priced models and wadded with cash sale blanks. Then when "tomorrow" you have to dive down the side alleys, you can tell Mr. and Mrs. Flivver about how you bagged Mr. and Mrs. Limousine, and the argument has WEIGHT — to say nothing of the golden ballast added to Friend Bank Account. When you can't make more than so many sales, beat the game by jacking up the horse power of each and every sale. Let the small fish go till leaner times — just now, harpoon the whales and take the fat. By doing this you'll be building up a business in records that will be a comfortable back log to prevent "cold feet" during wintry storms. Don't let your selling machinery lie down and go to sleep because of that hypnotic word "shortage." Keep it oiled up and running, ready to drop into high the minute you shift gears. •Ifi i(i ^ -i^L PROBABLY to a great many dealers, it seems at first a rather inopportune time to create a department which will specialize on the promotion of retail sales. Many, in fact most, dealers are today confronted not so much with the necessity of finding ways and means to sell as of finding ways and means to keep customers satisfied who require a particular model of machine or a particular record until it is possible to deliver ■ the thing especially desired. The great demand which to-day cannot be met has caused the average dealer to be little more than an order taker. Such a state of affairs is intolerable for the merchant who is duly concerned over the future. The wise merchant starts his thoughts like all the others, but carries them through to a rational conclusion. He argues something like this : "Confound it, we could do a $30,000 larger turnover if only the Blank Company would get us a few hundred machines of the models we need — of the models which we now have twenty sold, but can't deliver and therefore have to substitute a bastard machine. And if only the Blank Compan}' would ship us the right quantities of the right records. I'll tell the whole world, it hurts to see so much A-1 business walk right by my door." ^ ^ ^ ij; ^ _ .-\nd then having worked himself up into a frame of mind that would make any manufacturer or jobber feel as though he were on the Hun end of a Yank charge, this same WISE merchant cools down and calms himself into a soliloquy of sound reason, which runs like this : "After all. have I got any right to upbraid the people upon whom I depend for machines and records? Are they really to l)lame ? "The more I think about it the less reason there seems to justify my being a chronic kicker. I may be losing perfectly good business, but anyway it is "order taking' transactions and not real sales that I am producing. Before I start assailing the sources of my supply, it is up to me to get out and energetically push, promote and close sales on models of machines and record selections that I have got and can get." ^ jf; ^s^ It is sufficient for the purpose of this article to seek one end. viz., the inducing of talking machine dealers to drop the hackneyed and non-profitable course of complaining about shortages and to take up the formation of sales promotion plans calculated to insure a good live, profitable business when stock of all kinds is quite plentiful. That time is not now far distant, and it behooves every dealer to prepare by spurring uj-) sales efficiency throughout his entire organization. More of this next month, when this department will be devoted to concrete suggestions on how to buck up merchandising efficiency in the face of a seller's market. In the meantime, get your mental airplane sailing above the fog, not through it.