BOARDMAN Owner notes flat sales in closing piano store

The owner plans to focus efforts on his Hermitage and Pittsburgh stores.
THE VINDICATOR, YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
BOARDMAN -- Even a spot in Boardman's bustling commercial district wasn't enough to produce strong sales for Valley Piano & amp; Organ.
Owner Tom Bayus is closing his Boardman location at 70 Boardman-Poland Road across from the Southern Park Mall and said he'll concentrate his efforts on other stores in Hermitage, Pa., and Pittsburgh.
The Boardman store will close Monday, and two of its three staff members will be offered jobs in the Hermitage store. Bayus closed his other Mahoning Valley store on Youngstown-Warren Road in Niles earlier this year.
"Sales are down, the economy is bad, and the Niles and Boardman stores have been only marginally profitable," he said. "We're not going out of business. We're just closing the Boardman store. This market really only warrants one store."
A Brookfield native, Bayus started selling pianos at 19, shortly after graduating from Brookfield High School in 1969. He founded Valley Piano and Organ in 1985, opening his first store on East State Street in Hermitage.
Sales comparisons
Sales have been consistently strong at the Hermitage location, averaging between $1 million and $1.5 million per year, he said. The Pittsburgh store, Pittsburgh Piano Co., has also done well.
The Boardman store had average sales of $650,000 in a good year, he said, but the figure is lower this year.
Bayus said his first Boardman location opened in the early 1990s in the Southern Park Mall, but when the cost of rent increased about five years ago he moved out to a site across the street from the mall.
"That was probably a mistake. In the mall you have people walking by, they walk in and decide they want to buy a piano or organ," he said. "We don't have that now with a store outside the mall. But we didn't really have a choice. The cost to stay in the mall was too high."
A secondary problem that Bayus cited as a factor in his decision to close in Boardman was a lack of qualified staff. Piano sales staff are hard to find, he said, because they must have an understanding of each instrument's construction and features and the jobs are generally paid by commission only.
Valley Piano employs 10 full- and part-time workers at the Hermitage store, and three in the Pittsburgh store.
Loyal customers
Bayus said he's seen Trumbull County customers at the Hermitage store since he closed the Niles location, and he's confident that Mahoning County shoppers will also make the drive after the Boardman store is closed.
The store occasionally does some business outside Northeast Ohio and northwestern Pennsylvania. Bayus said he recently sold a player piano to President Bush's White House physician after advertising the unusual instrument on an Internet auction site.
vinarsky@vindy.com