Dallas Dealer's All-Steinway Strategy
Music Trades Magazine - January 2010
By: Sonia Kanigel
In January 2007, Danny Saliba, president of Steinway Hall-Dallas/Forth Worth/Plano was honored as one of the nation’s premier Steinway dealers, a retailer who seized on Steinway’s model of prospect cultivation and pushed it to its limits with 42 promotions in a single year. Although he hadn’t yet made it public, it was around the same time that Saliba decided to make the store an all-Steinway dealership. To that point he’d dealt in a number of non-Steinway & Sons brands, but sales analysis showed that the profit generated by those pianos wasn’t enough to justify the effort of promoting and maintaining them. With the piano market in a slump (as it had been since 2001), Steinway-DFW changed course, selling off its secondary brands and paring its selection down to the Steinway, Boston, and Essex lines manufactured by Steinway & Sons. It’s taken three years for the strategy to play out fully, but Steinway-DFW’s sales ledgers indicate that it has worked. The dealer’s sales are up 5% from last year, and about level with its figures for 2006—a scenario most retailers in any industry would sign up for in a heartbeat.
“There’s consistency in what we do, and that’s important right now,” says Danny. “In this marketplace—man, you’ve got to be good.”
Danny—along with his wife L.B., executive vice president of Steinway-DFW, and his son Casey, director of sales and marketing—say their strategy succeeds on multiple levels. For the dealer it’s a matter of branding and identity. “When you go to Mercedes-Benz dealership, what do you see on their show floor?” says Casey. “You see Mercedes. You don’t go in and ask for a Kia.” The Salibas say establishing that strong identification with a high-caliber product has sharpened their sales message, allowing salespeople to project single-minded confidence in their chosen brand. “When you’re promoting six or 12 different manufacturers on your showroom floor, it raises the question of what you really represent and what you believe in,” Casey says. “By carrying only Steinway, Boston, and Essex, the proof of what we stand for is on our showroom floor. These are the pianos we believe in.” On the service side, says Danny, having one contact person to call regarding any of Steinway & Sons three lines leads to reliable support and minimal aggravation. “The customer wins,” he says. “That’s what this decision is all about. The customer was not winning with the other products I sold.”
While the Steinway & Sons name carries connotations of the highest-end pianos in the world, the manufacturer’s three lines, all developed by Steinway & Sons designers, present options for a spectrum of customers. One step down from the full-fledged Steinway piano is the Boston line, which at around $15,000 for a small grand is within reach for the mid-level piano buyer. The Essex line starts at $4,000 for a vertical—not a drastic stretch for the first-time buyer. “It’s not too hard to get them to jump from, say, $2,500 to $4,000 when you’ve got that ‘designed by Steinway & Sons’ label,” says Casey. Danny adds, “Doors open for Boston and Essex because of Steinway.”
A 30-year veteran of the industry, Danny Saliba was a district manager for Steinway & Sons before going into retail. As a dealer, he’s a dedicated practitioner of the signature Steinway strategies he once supported from the manufacturer’s side. Steinway-DFW recently hosted a “Believe What You Hear” event, a Steinway & Sons initiative designed to promote the Essex line through side-by-side evaluations with more costly Boston and Steinway pianos. On the institutional front, the dealer has just signed on McLennan Community College of Waco, Texas, as an all-Steinway school—a transaction representing 35 pianos and $750,000.
Over the past several months Steinway-DFW has been tracking the effects of the recession on the interests and buying habits of prospective piano buyers. Google Analytics, a tool used to analyze internet traffic and web-browsing patterns, revealed the term “used piano” to be one of the top web searches among piano shoppers, prompting Steinway-DFW to host a “Steinway Warehouse Piano Event” from December 3 through 6. Heavily promoted both by Steinway-DFW marketing team Paige Hendricks Public Relations and through the store’s website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed, the event spotlighted Steinway-DFW’s collection of used Steinway-designed pianos.
In a twist, however, the strategy behind the event resulted in greater sales of new pianos than of used pianos. “The event was held on the second floor, where the used pianos are displayed,” says Casey. “On the main show floor were our new Steinway-designed pianos. Thus, every client who came to the event had to walk by the new pianos to get to the used collection. Given the choice, the majority selected a new Steinway over a used Steinway.”
All told, Steinway-DFW’s “Steinway Warehouse Piano Event” netted $500,000—$350,000 of that sum in new piano sales.
“This event was successful because of what led up to it,” says Casey, “the cultivating of prospects and traffic-building events that preceded the sale. In this market, you have to approach your strategy differently. It’s the out-of the box ideas that are working for us right now. If you see this as a time to try something new and creative, it can be an opportunity and not a time to hold back.”
Subscribe to The Music Trades today!