PIANO & FORTUNE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 11, 23 December 1933, Page 8

PIANO & FORTUNE

STORY OF A WELSHMAN CAVE UP £6OO A YEAR. MADE HIMSELF RICH (By C. A. Lyon.) This is the story of a man who went into the derelict factory of a derelict piano business with next to no capital and beat all the Germans by turning it not only into a great piano business —but the greatest piano business in the world. And he is also the youngest president the Pianoforte Manufacturers Association have ever had! It Bounds impossible—but he has actually done it m six years. The astonishing thing is that no one outside the trade has known of the story before. “Bill” Evans was a Welshman, but practically all the Welsh he remembers is “Good night” and “Good morning,” as his father was a London police inspector, and he came from Treorchy to London when he was three months old. At seventeen he left the technical school where he had distinguished himself, and undertook the mechanical reorganisation of a piano factory at £2 1(1/- a week. OFF TO THE WAR-THEN £3OO A YEAR. He went to the war at eighteen. At twenty-two he became the works engineer of another piano factory at £5OO * year. When he was twenty-nine he was approached by creditors and representatives of Charles H. Challen and Son, Ltd. The firm was one of ftse oldest in the trade, and once one of the largest. Its trade had gradually dwindled, and finally the firm had gone into liquidation. For three [months the factory had been shut down.

i When Mr. Evans went to see the [factory he was appalled. Everything was in indescribable chaos. Dust lay inches thick everywhere. The apprenrtices were riding round the factory on icyclcs. There wqs only one order ton the books and that was for only one [piano. At first Mr. Evans wanted to [turn down the job. He had a comfortable £6OO a year post with his exist|ing firm. Before him was the heart- . breaking chaos of a ruined, shut-down business w’ithout capital and with nothing but a long record of losses to reMommend it. He was managing dircc;tor, but he did not care. He took off his coat and began to clean the factory. He stopped the apprentices rid'nig on their bicycles, and made them ‘help in cleaning up the dirt. He ruined suits, and the apprentices finished every day like chimney sweeps. But he cleaned up the factory in a mouth. LALLING ON THOSE PESSIMISTS. Then he began to secure orders. He wrote to all the dealers he knew and told them he was trying to save the (rm of Challen. All those he wen’ to see were pessimistic. “I don’t think you’ll make much of it, but I’ll give you an order for six pianos,” a dealer in Liverpool told him.

Now in Liverpool two other dealers keep trying to persuade Mr. Evans ’ito let them have a share in the coveted Challen agency. It was like that everywhere. There was not a completed piano in the place when he came into it. Soon he was getting an output of ten piancs a week from his clean d up factory. Then a crisis came. The money that had been promised him was not forthcoming. He had to carry on the business with only £3OOG capital. <Ho would not let his relatives help Jbim. During the general strike dealeis ■with one accord cancelled tho pre< ious orders for sixty-seven pianos on hard, some even boxed ready for despatch. This lasted for about a fortnight. At (the end of that time there were only (two or three hundred pounds left in [the bank. If the gene;al Arise panic had lasted cue more ween Mr. lull fiEvans’ courageous endeavour wculd fnvc disappeared. IDEA THAT CAME FROM HIS WIFE ■ Actually orders began to be renewed just as things were becoming desperate, and the future world’s biggest piano maker resumed his small way. Boon after the general strike ho evolved a scheme that made piano history. He was asking his wife whether she would rather have a grand piano or a player-piano. "Are you serious.’” she said. “Why. of course, I would rather have the grand piano.” That incident determined a great policy in Mr. Evans’s minds. Women evidently liked grand pianos. He was to be the first man ever to produce unall grand pianos on a large scale •nd see the possibilities. The smallest grand piano ever made in any quantity before had been the five-foot size, and the lowest price in his factory had been £l5O. He set about designing a new 4ft. Gin. grand piano. Before ho had drawn a line of it he had orders for sixty pianos. The price was 108 guineas. Sixty pianos ordered—and he did not know if his 4ft. 6in. grand could be a success! SIXTY MORE MEN TAKEN ON. So far from this depressing him. he laid down 100 grand pianos at once — more than had ever before been laid down at once in a British factory. He •Iso took on sixty more men. This absorbed nearly all the firm’s capital, •nd tho tension was severe during the eight weeks the pianos were building. However, as Mr. Evans always said. Providence was with the firm he was resuscitating, and as soon as he heard [the first of the small grand pianos ho knew they were good. He sold all the 100 in less than six months, and by the end of that time he had orders for 250 more.

In the first year of his “grand” idea he sold 352 grand pianos, more than the firm had ever sold in its palmiest days. By 1927 he was making over 1000 pianos a year. That is the bald story of hts romantic first successes —but what a story .there is behind it as well. He worked |to sell those pianos as no managing (director ever worked before. He travelled in a small sports car from Inverness to Plymouth. He travelled about 80.000 miles » y?ar. He visited about 600 agents a year. He went about incognito, selling the pianos on their merits, and not saying he was the managing director. Once in his i-ravels he told the East Anglian dealer he was not carrying tho proper representative stock of pianos. TEN CALLS BUT ONLY ONE ORDER. "Look here. I have neier been spoken to like that ’in uiy hie before,”

the dealer said. “I shall complain to the sales manager.”

“You need not trouble,” Mr. Evans said, and he told him who he was. One day, one of many alike, this managing' director went from shop to shop all round Birmingham in the pouring rain. He called at ten shops, and it was only at the last one that he received an order for one piano. Some of the others had not been over polite to him. He was keen on capturing the Scottish business. Now and again, to save losing a working day, he would just miss a night’s sleep and drive through tho night the whole 400 miles between London and Edinburgh, and start hunting for orders in the morning. While ordinary travellers would spend a pleasant evening after their day’s work, Bill Evans just packed up and drove twenty, thirty, or fifty miles to his next town so that he could start selling again first thing in the morning. Ho endured all sorts of hardships through arriving in towns long after all accommodation had gone. In Ipswich once he slept in his macintosh in a rain-sodden bed in a garret because he had arrived too late to find rooms at the hotel. Many dealers became so used to seeing the travelling managing director that they would not see the other travellers. And so he built his business. When he went to the factory there were scarcely more than a couple of dozen agents. Now there are 500 distributed throughout the world, almost all of whom have been visited by Bill Evans personally. GRAND PIANOS BUT SMALLER STILL. In 1927 he had another grand idea. ¥he rest of the trade had been standing aside from small grand pianos, saying Bill Evans would ruin himself. His answer to that was this:—The firm had not paid a dividend for years. In 1927 it paid GJ per cent. Now he took his ideas a step further. He cut another three inches off his pianos, and produced a 4ft. 3in. grand piano for seventy-five guineas. People in tho trade said he was going to extremes. In one year the 4ft. 3in. grands doubled his piano output. \He sold 1000 of them. Selfridge’s alone sold seventy in one month!

That year the firm paid 15 per cent, dividend Tho next year they paid 20 per cent., and in 1930 50 per cent. His success was anything but luck. In 1931 he repeated it all. Tho old firm of Broadwood asked him to be their manufacturing director. He took on the job. The firm had not made a profit for years. NEW FACTORY IN THE SUBURBS." Their capital had been written down by £2SO,(MX). Mr. Evans was now an exceedingly important man, but ho did not stand on ceremony. He immediately set out, just as an ordinary traveller would, to go on the road for them. In the intervals of supervising his own constantly increasing output ho visited 200 agents for Broadwoods in the first year. There’s a managing director for you i

He got rid of their highly-rated factory in central London. He bought one at Hendon, equipped it, and opened it within a month. Probably Broadwoods had never been so shaken up since they began in 1728. In 1931 from a rapidly dwindling business ho made more Broadwood grand pianos than had ever been made before in the firm’s history. More wonderful still, he succeeded in showing them a small profit! When the 8.8. C. moved into the new building nobody thought that anybody but Germans could make really superfine pianos. Mr. Evans spent £5OOO and his workmen gave careful workmanship to perfecting grand pianos. AN ORDER FOR THIRTY “GRANDS.” There was an open competition for the contract. Impartial musicians listened to thirteen different pianos, British and foreign behind screens. The final was narrowed down to one German and one French make—and Mr Evans’s. Mr. Evans won the day. He secured tho order for thirty grand pianos at once This in tho largest order for concert grand pianos ever given in history. Four were £450 pianos! Even after these great coups lie did not relapse into the traditional directorial coma. To-day he is the highest paid man in the piano business. Two years ago he became chairman of Challens as well as managing director. He is also works director of Broadwoods, and chairman of a cabinet-making factory which will in future make his piano cases more economically. He is also chairman of a piano action company. As the world’s largest piano maker he still goes ont and obtains the business as in the old days six years ago. His pianos go to Australia, New Zealand, India, the West Indies, the Canary Islands, and South America.