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Industry News

The fall — and rise again — of the record store

September 11, 2018

If iTunes, Napster and Spotify are supposed to have killed off the record store, it turns out they may not have done a very thorough job.

When Tower Records bit the dust in 2006, there were about 2,000 recorded-music stores in the U.S., and the number was dropping. But that number is now 2,400 — and rising, reports Retail Dive. The publication cites one particular thriving concept: Bull Moose, which operates 12 stores in New England and is growing. The size of those stores is growing too: Today they variously measure between 8,000 and 13,000 square feet, double the size of the very first stores.

What accounts for Bull Moose’s defiant survival? The realities of shopper experience and of high-tech inventory management, apparently. Bull Moose, launched in Maine in 1989, pays close attention to its local customer base and tailors its merchandise accordingly. Thus, it sells not just records and CDs, but also books, games and movies.

“Here you have a regional entertainment retailer that sells books, games, CDs and movies, most of which is available by streaming — and that Amazon sells. The question is: What do they know that nobody else knows?”

This is a similar story to that of bookstores, which were supposed to have been killed off by Amazon.com.

"Here you have a regional entertainment retailer that sells books, games, CDs and movies, most of which is available by streaming — and that Amazon sells," said Michael Stefanakos, vice president of lean retail partnerships at retail software company FieldStack, as reported in Retail Dive. "The question is: What do they know that nobody else knows?"

FieldStack analytics assess which merchandise gets sold to whom, on the national, regional and local levels, to help retail clients figure out what they need to stock. The firm also fulfills orders — a particular record, for example — from other stores, so that retailers need not keep up any large and expensive warehouses, notes Retail Dive.

Hiring staff people based on how friendly they are rather than on their expertise is a key factor too. "There's a lot of considerations there,” said Chris Brown, CFO of Bull Moose and a co-founder of the Record Store Day national event, speaking to Retail Dive, “but we've found that nice people do a better job of selling media than people who aren't."

By Edmund Mander

Director, Editor-In-Chief/SCT

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