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 The Year was 1912... It was a year that saw many amazing things both at home and abroad. Japan gave a gift of cherry trees to the United States. The RMS Titanic set sail on its maiden and final voyage. The South Pole was discovered. Teddy Roosevelt was nominated for President. It was also the year that Arthur Jordan purchased the Juelg Piano Company and transformed it into an enterprise that would become Jordan Kitt's Music. Formerly most famous for being the first man to ship a trainload of poultry from Indianapolis to New York City, Arthur Jordan entered his first forray into the music business by opening the Arthur Jordan Piano Company at 13th and G Street in the Nation's Capital.
Though it was a joint ownership of a single business and in fact had a single manager for both stores, each operated completely independently in an effort to corner the market on franchises. They sold different product, employed different personnel, and were fiercely competitive. Any connection between them was a complete mystery to the general public for decades. Throughout the twenties, the player piano was the choice of most consumers. A time before common forms of modern entertainment like television and computers were invented, there were few radios and even fewer "talking machines", now known as phonographs, in the average American home. But the bell tolled for the player piano in 1929 with the onset of the Great Depression.
By 1932, a piano company could not live by pianos alone. The economy forced retailers to offer a variety of products, and the Arthur Jordan Piano Company was no exception. A prospect entry sheet from January 22, 1932 reveals customers interested in two pianos, one radio and two refrigerators. Arthur Jordan passed away in 1934, leaving the Arthur Jordan Foundation in control of his share of the piano companies and his continued legacy. At 5:32am on September 14, 1938, firemen responded to the first of two alarms and found the building at 1330 G Street ablaze. Fires had started separately on three floors. When the smoke cleared, literally, the building had been ravaged to the tune of $50,000 in both fixtures and furnishings. Because of three minor fires in previous weeks, and the fact that the front door had been found unlocked and open, lead investigators suspected arson, as reported in the Evening Star the following day. The report shared the front page along with Neville Chamberlain's infamous visit to Adolph Hitler from which he would later announce, erroneously, that he had achieved "Peace in our Time". The only casualty of the fire were Fireman Buck Wright's false teeth, lost while battling the blaze. Fellow firefighters aided him in his search but at the end of the day, according to the Evening Star, it looked as if he would not be eating steaks for a while. After the fire, the building took on a new guise, replacing the burnt out Spanish facade with an art deco design popular at the time. Sales and prosperity continued unhindered under December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and America once again found itself at war. Piano retailing took on a new shape during war time. Many bright and talented salesmen were now in the business of making war overseas and merchandise was hard if not impossible to come by. A telegram from the Rudolph Wurlitzer company in 1942 marked the end of an era for the Arthur Jordan and Homer Kitt piano companies, saying simply: sorry, we are all out of grands. Also spinets. Manufacturers were now fully engaged in the war effort, and piano business would be at a standstill for the next few years. Homer Kitt aided the effort by opening a "Music Canteen" and offering free practice space to servicemen and a complimentary repair shop for service band members, until his death in 1943. The Arthur Jordan Foundation was now in control of both companies and appointed Frances Jones General Manager and executive Vice President during the last year of the war. Frances had been Homer Kitt's secretary, and had been with the company since 1922. Under her leadership, the two piano companies became even more engrained in the music culture of the nation's capital. By 1957, it had acquired stores in Virginia Beach, Va. and was now the Washington, D.C. area's oldest continuously operating music company. After Frances Jones retired in 1970, the company found itself on the brink of insolvency, as reported in the Music Trades. Salvation would come from an unusual place: The sugar cane fields of the Philippines via Madison Avenue in New York. After a successful tenure as CFO for a southeast asian sugar mill, and half a decade as a marketing management consulant for a variety of fortune 500 companies, Bill McCormick was appointed President of Jordan Kitt's Music in an effort to turn the company around. Though having no formal training in music, he quickly restored the company to prosperity by recognizing and promoting the talent already within the company, aggressively increasing advertising and promotional spending, and investing in new store locations. Bill acquired controlling interest in the company in 1976, and by the end of the decade, sales had increased 600%, and Jordan Kitt's had been appointed exclusive area representatives of Steinway pianos. Under Bill's leadership, the company continued to expand its' geographic presence throughout the 1980s with additional acquisitions. Now passionate about the company and it's potential, he decided to make it his own, and acquired sole ownership in 1983 by buying out his partners at 7 times their original investment. In the 1990s, the company acquired Steinway Piano Galleries in Atlanta, and by the turn of the century, had become America's Largest Piano and Keyboard Retailer. With only half the number of storefronts of just over a decade earlier sales had now nearly doubled. Throughout the new century, Jordan Kitt's continued at the leading edge of piano retailing, consolidating into showroom locations, and now manufacturing its own piano designed to offer customers high end piano features at affordable prices. True to the legacy established by both Arthur Jordan and Bill McCormick, Jordan Kitt's Music was to be led again by a professional from outside the industry. In the fall of 2007, Richard Grant was elected president of Jordan Kitt's by the board of directors, ensuring the continuation of a family owned, professionally managed company. He was no strange face, having been involved professionally with Jordan Kitt's since 1994, but now brought new insight to the company from nearly twenty years of experience in Sales and Marketing management, most recently as Partner in a multi-million dollar division of IBM business consulting.
On Christmas Eve of 2007, Bill McCormick passed away, leaving a legacy of success unrivaled throughout the history of the modern music industry, but not before building the company that had become his passion into an area institution, and ensuring its continued
prosperity through the application of his talent, business acumen and most of all... persistence.
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 ©2004 - 2009 A Jordan Kitt's Music Company. All Rights Reserved. |