As the Company grew, the Starr brothers began to sell pianos through the Jesse French Company, based in St. Louis. Henry Gennett, then vice-president of the Jesse French Company, and his father-in-law, John Lumsden, began merger negotiations with James and Benjamin Starr that resulted in the 1893 incorporation of the Starr Piano Company, a new incarnation of the earlier Trayser Piano Company. Starr pianos gained an international reputation and distribution, winning awards for their quality at Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893, the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, and many other international exhibitions.

By 1897, Starr Piano Company stock had doubled in value, and operations continued to grow exponentially. The Starr Piano Company was part of an elite group of American piano manufacturers that controlled over 75 percent of the booming piano market. The Starr Piano Company had stores in nearly every major U.S. city and frequently shipped pianos overseas. At this point in American history, the piano held a prominent role in American culture, which helps explain the development of a flourishing market for pianos.

During the 1800s, the piano was the primary medium for the dissemination of popular music. Americans clambered to buy pianos, the presence of which in one’s home helped to signify the achievement of middle-class, genteel status. Before the advent of radio and the spread of recorded music, many Americans chose to buy popular tunes in the form of sheet music that could be performed at home on the piano. With the popularization of player pianos in the early part of the 1900s, the music industry gained another product to exploit. The Starr Piano Company, eager to profit from the new player piano technology, began selling player pianos and piano rolls around 1906.

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