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Under our free enterprise system, companies compete with one another for the customers' purchases. This competition manifests itself in many different ways, Some companies invest in research and development to come up with attractive new products. Some companies "clone" the successful products of others. Some companies try to build a good reputation with customers through years of stability and service. Some companies lure customers by claiming everything under the sun in their advertising, whether true or not. No individual company can afford to ignore the actions taken by all the other companies in its market. Whether we like it or not, the history of each company is inextricably intertwined with that of its competitors.
Competition is certainly not new to the organ business. For example, the famous "Battle of the Organs" took place in England in the latter 1600s. Bernard Smith and Renatus Harris were prominent pipe organ builders in competition with each other at that time. Both men sought the contract to build an organ for the Temple Church in London. After much haggling, a decision was made to allow both men to build organs at different locations in the church. A public trial of the instruments was to decide which would stay and which would go.
The "Battle," which took several years to run its course, must have placed an enormous financial strain on both organ builders. According to rumor, with so much at stake, one builder even tried to sabotage his competitor's instrument. In the end, both organs were deemed to be excellent. However, Smith was given the nod, and Harris, much frustrated, had to remove his instrument.
A few centuries after the "Battle of the Organs," competition among organ builders was still going strong. In 1935, Hammond introduced the first commercially successful all-electric organ. The Hammond Organ, of course, became enormously popular. Early on, it was touted as being a competitor to the pipe organ. In reality, it didn't sound like a pipe organ at all. However, its sound had various other unique characteristics which became highly prized by many popular music performers throughout the world. In essence, the Hammond created its own market, essentially separate from the pipe organ market. So, for many years following its introduction, the Hammond Organ was a great commercial success, regardless of its limitations in competing with pipe organs.
By the time Allen Organ Company was getting off the ground, the Hammond Organ was so well established that it, in essence, became the standard of comparison for the other non-pipe organs to follow. Often, when a pioneer product such as the Hammond appears, competitors spring up looking for a piece of the action. In recent years, in the case of the personal computer, competitors have introduced products which are more or less indistinguishable from the pioneer product in functionality, but cost less. These successor products are aptly described as "clones." The early Allen Organs sounded much more like a pipe organ than a Hammond. So although we recognized the market potential in "cloning" the Hammond, we chose instead to further distance ourselves from the Hammond in hopes of creating our own market. The goal of Allen Organ Company was, at that time, to emulate the pipe organ as closely as possible. In fact, over the years, my guiding principle has been to make the Allen sound so much like a pipe organ as to be indistinguishable from it.
As Allen Organs "caught on" with those seeking the sound of pipes without the problems of pipes, competitors began to spring up in our market niche. In the late 1940s other companies introduced products which appeared to be aimed at this market. Examples include Baldwin, even at that time a long-established piano manufacturer; Conn, the famous band instrument producer; and Wurlitzer, well-known for its theater pipe organs. These companies, among others, followed Allen's lead rather than that of Hammond, who continued to produce their unique pioneering product in substantial quantities.
Between those early years and the present time, well over twenty different manufacturers appeared on the scene in an attempt to capitalize on our lead. In several cases, the appearance was only transitory. Getting started was easy, but keeping the business going was more difficult. The organ industry was such that it was possible, especially in the early years, to become a start-up manufacturer with relatively little capital. The newcomers didn't have much to lose. The main hurdle was learning the technology. In some cases, the start-up had actually received "training" by servicing Allen Organs.
I suppose having start-ups trying to emulate one's product is a good measure of one's success. At its best, this type of competition is also good for the customer. As the competitors spar for position, the better companies will be more eager to advance the state of the art. They will submit yet a better product to the test of the marketplace, where the ultimate judge is invariably the customer. However, competition isn't always at its best.
Several aspects of the organ business foster a temptation for some to employ more unsavory competitive techniques. For instance, organs are "big ticket" items. Accordingly, a competitor can't afford to lose too many individual sales. In this high pressure atmosphere, a competitor can sometimes go "way beyond" the boundaries of honest competition. Consider, for example, the following quote from the sales manual of one of Allen's competitors:
Terrorizing is a full-time sport. You must enjoy doing a job on someone for maximum effect. Knowing how to do it also helps you recognize when a competitor is trying to terrorize you! It takes many months, sometimes years, to get to your competitors. However, unless you start right away, you will never enjoy the benefits of properly terrorized competitors.
Misinformation. A variation of the rumor, which usually has a kernel of fact or is totally factual, is misinformation. Presented as a rumor to competitors it is designed to really put them in a spin. If they repeat it to customers, they will likely be looked upon as foolish because the idea will seem so outrageous. Examples might be telling them a smaller competitor is going out of business, that a key church they are competing in has decided to buy a tracker, or any other sort of crazy thing. These must be stated as rumor, not fact, and you must swear them to secrecy. Use them sparsely so they cannot tell the misinformation from actual rumors. It adds to the fun!
Letters from Lawyers. In some cases it may be appropriate to send a dealer a letter from your lawyer threatening a lawsuit (even if the grounds are shady) for libel or slander, just to shake up their game. Most people will change their tactics if they think they might get sued.
I expect the reader will have the same feeling that I experienced when I first read the words quoted above. Is this par for the ethical standards of the American business community today? Why has a supposedly legitimate business enterprise stooped to using such deplorable methods? Well, for one reason, it's effective, at least in the short run-like using poison gas in warfare.
Tactics such as those described above exploit man's trusting nature. I believe that people, by instinct, tend to assume that information from a "friendly" source is factual. If the "friendly" source happens to throw in some "misinformation," the chances are good that it will be accepted as fact. Thus, the company or dealer using such tactics might first establish a "friendly" rapport with the potential customer. If a competitor appears on the scene, the "friendly" company or dealer feeds the customer some disparaging "misinformation" about the competing company or its product. More often than not, the customer will then develop a negative attitude towards the competing company, an attitude that is difficult to turn around. The unsuspecting customer can easily end up buying an inferior product from the "friendly" misinformer.
For an actual example of the use of "misinformation," consider the following quote from one of the "misinformation" letters used against Allen. The excerpt is from a recent letter written to a church pastor by one of Allen's competitors who was frustrated by the favorable reception Allen received from the organ search committee at the church.
"I presume that you do know that The Allen Company has been for sale for many months now since the founder and major stockholder, Jerome Markowitz, is in the process of retirement and to the best of our knowledge at this point in time, no buyer is on the immediate horizon."
As plausible as this statement might sound, it was totally inaccurate. The letter also included various technical misstatements along with allusions to the "high degree of trust" established between the pastor and the author of the letter. Trust indeed!
Although we all accept that organ builders have to make a living selling their product, I believe that many people are loath to think about church organs the way they think about other more familiar products such as automobiles or soap powder. The church organ has always enjoyed a certain mystique all its own. To the average person, both pipe and electronic organs are mysterious entities fully understood by only a handful of specialists. In sharp contrast, there are millions of car buffs who can readily reel off the technical pros and cons of the various models. Arguments in support of or against a particular model car are often laced with technical jargon which is substantially well understood by the various proponents. However, organs are far less familiar. As a result, I suspect that those either purchasing an organ for their church or having one rebuilt will exercise less informed scrutiny than they would when, for example, they shop for the family automobile. They may tend to assume that suppliers of goods and services to religious institutions are somehow above a shady deal. In reality, churches have had their share of rip-offs. For example, I know of an extreme case recently where a pipe organ repairman disappeared with a large quantity of the church's money before doing his work. Regretfully, this has happened before. Other less obvious rip-offs occur all too often.
When members of a church or other institution are faced with the purchase of an organ, how do they obtain the information upon which to base their decisions? For one thing, they almost always call on the local "expert." This could be an organist who, if nothing else, knows a good deal more about organs than those charged with the selection decision. In such a situation, the advisor can easily command an inordinate amount of influence. The weakness in this situation is that the typical advisor may lean heavily towards one particular school of thought based on a very narrow viewpoint. They may endow organs with an overly romantic or classic character, for example.
In defending personal ideals, the advisor may casually dismiss practical considerations. The advisor may even refuse to look at the organ as a machine which obeys the laws of nature. Relying too heavily on the local "expert" to provide direction increases the susceptibility to being misguided by overly aggressive competitors. For example, I've been told that it is common in some countries for a pipe organ company to provide the local organist/adviser with a tidy kickback on a sale of a product. Less direct cultivation techniques such as stroking an ego are more common. The "expert" might very well turn to a company who is the "friendliest" when it comes time to buy an organ. Prominent organists have even been allowed the use of an instrument on a "permanent loan" basis. The competitor using this ploy typically suggests that the organist "chose" the competitor's product over everyone else's purely on the basis of merit. Given the complexity of today's organ technology, opportunities abound to cover up deficiencies or paint exaggerated images. The local "expert" can easily be swayed by tricky rhetoric or well-orchestrated demonstrations. It's a rare purchaser who will even insist on examining the inside of the console in order to check for quality of construction.
Another manifestation of competition is the need to know what market to go after. For example, at one time the home or popular organ market was booming. Various organ companies aimed a great deal of their engineering development efforts at new products for this market at the expense of their institutional product line. Perhaps the fast buck was a factor. The predominant quest was for more and more sophisticated "easy-play" features. Tonal quality was given far less attention than the flashy control panels which were all too characteristic of the home organ of the 1970s. Early on we saw the appearance of automatic rhythm systems. Press a button, and rhythm accompaniment would spontaneously commence!
Other automatic features were developed to take over more of the playing. Chordal accompaniment became available. By the late 1970s an owner of an "easy-play" organ merely had to play a solo sequence with one finger, and various types of rhythm and chordal accompaniments would "follow."
But easy-play organs carried the seeds of their own destruction. Invariably, owners found that easy play could only provide transitory satisfaction. The initial novelty didn't last long. The realization gradually set in that an easy play organ was suspiciously akin to a much less costly record player or cassette deck. Customer attitude toward the easy-play home organ turned toward the negative almost overnight. By the 1980s, the financial strain caused by diminishing sales took its toll on the industry. In this case, the pressures of competition resulted in strategies which benefited neither the customer nor the competitors who adopted these strategies. I'm thankful I resisted the lure of the easy-play era and kept Allen Organ out of it.
Also, at times, the church or institutional organ market has been sensitive to what appears to be the "latest and greatest" technology. I have occasionally seen churches literally leap into a deal based on the promise of an unproven technological "breakthrough" by a relative newcomer to the church organ business. In our high-tech world, some customers don't want to be caught with what might be construed as yesterday's technology. Competitors are very much aware of this consciousness of technology in the marketplace and, accordingly, are constantly offering the technological "wave of the future." I've seen an endless stream of these "breakthroughs" appear on the market over the years. Some succeed, but most fail. How can organ purchasers accurately evaluate apparent breakthroughs in technology? There is no easy answer to this question. Perhaps common sense is still the best guide. Does the organ actually sound better than the alternatives? Does it appear to be well built? Are other purchasers satisfied? What about the company's business record over the years and their general reputation for customer support, service, quality of construction, etc.?
Of course, the problem of evaluating the viability of new developments in technology is not new. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s we saw breakthroughs based on tone waveforms photographically replicated onto various kinds of spinning disks. Readout of the tone waveforms was done by a non-contacting pickup, such as photoelectric or capacitive. I believe a gentleman by the name of Ivan Eremeeff devised one of the first systems of this type in the 1930s. Compton, in England, actually built many such instruments in that same time frame. Electrovoice later introduced a photoelectric version of the system.
I recall a church, in the early 1960s, that was in the market for a new organ. The church was faced with deciding between competing technologies. Electrovoice came in with their promising new photoelectric disk technology while we offered our well-established oscillator system. Allen was rejected over the Electrovoice spinning disk organ because a technically oriented member of the church was convinced that the photoelectric disk technology was, without a doubt, the wave of the future. To him, playing back the sounds of actual recorded pipes logically had to be more like pipes than the sound of Allen's electronic oscillators. Subsequently, the disk organ was installed in the church, but it quickly exhibited insurmountable operational problems. Fortunately, the church was able to back out of the purchase within a month or two and ended up buying an Allen after all. Eventually the spinning disk organ was discontinued, apparently because of continued operational difficulties. Even seemingly well-founded ideas often defy operational reality.
My comments on competition and organ technology would not be complete without mention of the hybrid organ. As many an organ enthusiast knows, the costs associated with buying and maintaining a pipe organ have gone through the roof. In contrast, digital computer organs offer an attractive alternative-about a five-to-one cost and space advantage over a comparable pipe organ. Yet, in spite of the fact that the human ear has difficulty in distinguishing between an Allen and a similarly registered pipe organ, there are those who still cling to pipes. If they can't afford a complete pipe organ, they may opt for an incomplete pipe organ-as long as there are some pipes used somewhere. Thus, was born the hybrid organ; this was a combination of a pipe organ and an electronic organ-a would-be carnival merchant's dream product.
In some cases, Allens have been used in combination with pipes. However, I've always discouraged this kind of arrangement. To begin with, aside from pipes being expensive and very difficult to work with, the tuning of the entire organ will be dictated by the pipes which are sensitive to temperature, to humidity, and to barometric pressure. The tuning stability and flexibility of the digital computer organ used in combination with these pipes can't be effectively utilized in this situation. Furthermore, pipes and pipe organs are esoteric machines and require a high level of knowledge and experience to manipulate them. Digital Computer Organs are conceptually different from pipe organs. Therefore, repairs on a hybrid organ will require the services of entirely different personnel for each of these entities. All in all, I feel that the money spent on the pipe voices of a hybrid organ would be better spent on additional Allen voices.
More than one organ company has taken advantage of the misguided affinity for pipes often found in some congregations by promoting the hybrid organ as the ideal organ. The hybrid organ appears, on the surface, to satisfy both the pipe organ holdouts and those responsible for the budget. The salesman will call it the best of both worlds. However, I see it as the worst of both worlds.
As far as Allen Organ is concerned, I have tried to meet the competition with a balance of new technology combined with scrupulous advertising and reasonable sales tactics, conscientious after-sale support, and proven records of service. For example, if we compare the Allen Digital Computer Organ of today with one made in the 1970s, we do indeed see and hear differences. We have made steady technological improvements over the years, but only when and where we believe our customers will benefit. This conservative approach may have lost some individual sales. However, I remain convinced, after more than fifty years in the business, that my approach to the pressures of competition is, in the final analysis, the best one.