Music Merchandising Moves into a House of Many Mansions

Abstract

SEVERAL Christmas seasons ago, small goods and accessories department of a large Chicago music store introduced a book of children's nursery rhymes set to music. It was gayly illustrated in color and piece de resistance of item was toy xylophone which was affixed to back cover. Upon this simple device a child could soon follow notes of HUMPTY-DUMPTY and tap out All for a dollar. The same article soon appeared in toy section of one of city's well-known department stores, and sold like hot cakes. .... In time, several purchasers brought back xylophone-book to Music Store because, they explained, the xylophone is not in tune. . . . True, department store disposed of scores of book on its merits as a toy; yet, when same brand of goods came from Lyon & Healy, customer regarded it in an entirely different light. To him, it appeared in aura of a Musical Instrument and as such people expected musical perfection, even at one dollar each. Thus while music merchandising follows fundamental pattern of other retail stores, it is undeniably hedged to some degree by very fact that it traffics in one of Arts. So to study growth and shifts of music merchandising systems from its pioneering days, we shall examine a case history of old-established firm of Lyon & Healy, Chicago, Illinois. We shall view it objectively and dispassionately through a chronological panorama from era of one-room music shops to its present musicaldepartment-store status. The Civil War had advanced well into year 1864, when 24-year-old Patrick J. Healy and George Washburn Lyon, 48, were sent out on a scouting mission by their employer, Mr. Oliver Ditson of Boston, to spot likely new locations for music stores in mid-west. Today Mr. Ditson probably would be known as an aggressive post-war planner. After a swing from Cincinnati to St. Louis and San Francisco, two men stopped off at then thriving thirty-year-old lakeport of Chicago. Much of its business section stood on unsteady stilts above mire of lakefront offering difficult foot passage from one store level to another. The elder and more conservative Mr. Lyon finally suggested that they abandon idea of Chicago as a fitting location for a new retail outlet and emphatically added that they return to Boston and-civilization. No, answered young Healy stoutly; no, I'll never go back. Instead he decided upon a store site and forthwith busied himself assembling stock of music for little shop at corner of Clark and Washington streets-a good traffic area in that day. Here under freshly-painted Lyon & Healy sign, looking lakeward, two Bostonians opened their doors on morning of October 14, 1864. Here, it may be safely said, was cradle of modern merchandising.