- For the first time in its history, Steinway & Sons signs a contract with an advertising agency, N.W. Ayer & Son. According to the agency, a piano is not something one would buy very often, and the existing Steinway & Sons marketing actions – concerts and advertisements in music journals – have been aimed to fill what’s already full, targeting mostly people with strong interest in music, who likely already have a good piano, possibly even one made by Steinway & Sons. Such approach makes every sale of a Steinway & Sons piano almost an accident. N.W. Ayer & Son suggests to target instead people who are not currently actively involved in music, and to incite their interest to musical activities by offering them a Steinway & Sons piano as a symbol of social status and prestige. The new marketing campaign launches in Philadelphia, advertising Steinway & Sons pianos sold by “N. Stetson and Company”. In the course of the next several months the campaign expands to include Saturday Evening Post in Indianopolis, The Atlantic in Washington, D.C., Literary Digest, Vanity Fair and New York Times in New York, and the international Review of Reviews. Major Steinway & Sons dealers, for example Chicago’s Lyon & Healy, run independent Steinway & Sons advertising campaigns, based on the same idea. Within a year the sales of Steinway & Sons dramatically increase. (This revolutionary type of marketing campaign, pioneered by N.W. Ayer & Son and Steinway & Sons, will become the model for the XX century approach to marketing throughout numerous different industries.)
- Steinway & Sons makes $460,000 net profit. The directors vote to increase their salaries by 25%, from $12,000 to $16,000.
- Retail price of a new Steinway & Sons Model D grand piano is $1,400.
- Steinway & Sons Model N upright piano, first introduced this year, sells for $550.
- Theodore Edwin Steinway, (age 17), William Steinway’s youngest son, begins to work at Steinway & Sons factory as an apprentice.
- Ernest Urchs & Company is liquidated due to Steinway & Sons inability to maintain the company-owned dealership in Cincinnati, Ohio.
- Ottilie Steinway Recknagel, the ex-wife of late George A. Steinway, sues Steinway & Sons in Brooklyn Supreme Court for the monetary support to her children, promised to her by William Steinway.
- New York Court of Appeals dismisses Henry W.T. Steinway’s suit against the trust established by C.F. Theodor Steinweg. True to his nature, Henry W.T. Steinway sues again, this time disputing his being obligated to pay $40,000 fee to attorney George W. Cotterill.
- At the beginning of the XXth century even the partial list of musicians associated with Steinway & Sons includes all the most brilliant piano virtuosi: Adele Aus der Ohe, Fannie Bloomfield-Zeisler, Ferruccio Busoni, Teresa Carreño, Eugen d’Albert, Erno Dohnanyi, Arthur Friedheim, Leopold Godowski, Josef Hofmann, Rafael Joseffy, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Alexander Siloti, and many others. (Of all these pianists, the company vice-president and proficient amateur pianist Frederick T. Steinway prefers Alexander Siloti, for his ability to produce exceptionally beautiful tone color on a Steinway & Sons piano.)
- Ignacy Jan Paderewski begins to endorse Pianola, an automatic piano-playing mechanism invented by E.S. Votey.
- By the turn of the century, the most of the patents held by Henry Steinway and C.F. Theodor Steinweg have expired, and all the crucial Steinway & Sons’ piano manufacturing innovations are in a public domain and used by the company’s competitors. The industry of the piano components is developed sufficiently enough to enable practically anyone to become a piano manufacturer, simply by ordering the best (or the most affordable) components from different makers, assemble them in a shop-for-hire, and stencil a chosen brand name. To address this tendency, Steinway & Sons in its advertisements begins to remind the prospective piano buyers of the company’s status as “the only Manufacturers who make all component parts of their pianofortes, exterior and interior (including the casting of the full metal frames) in their own factories.” This will remain the prominent part of Steinway & Sons ads well into 1940s.