- Steinway & Sons gross profit for that year is $314,000 ($583,955 less than the previous year’s net profit!) Paradoxically, the profit drops as the sales continue to grow. The company’s decrease in profitability is the consequence of 48% increase in labor cost, labor fluidity, changes in German tax system, and more than 50% increase in the cost of materials.
- Steinway & Sons cancels the 116-year-long tradition of providing free pianos to artists and people of influence. The current beneficiaries of the tradition are offered the choice of either buying out their pianos, renting them, or returning them to Steinway & Sons (about two thirds preferred to buy the pianos, and the rest returned them).
- After 69 years of collaboration with Steinway & Sons (the record in the history of advertising), N.W. Ayer & Son advertising agency leaves Steinway & Sons for a better paying new client: Yamaha.