Tower Records
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- This article is about the retail music chain. For the 1960s record label, see Tower Records (record label).
Tower Records is a retail music chain based in Sacramento, California. Tower was founded in 1960 by Russ Solomon in Sacramento, California. The store was named after his father's drugstore, which shared a building and name with the Tower Theater[1], where Solomon first started selling records. As of October 2006, all Tower Records stores in the United States are being liquidated and holding "going out of business" sales, although the Tower Records web site still remains open.
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[edit] History
Seven years after its founding, Tower Records expanded to San Francisco, opening a store in what was originally a grocery store at Bay and Columbus streets. The chain eventually expanded internationally and now includes stores in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Republic of Ireland, Israel, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. The store also established Tower Records stores in Japan, but those stores split off from main chain and are now independent. Arguably the most famous Tower Records outlet is the one located on the north side of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. In addition to CDs and cassette tapes (few carry vinyl LPs anymore), stores also sell DVDs, PSP movies, video games, accessories, toys and electronic gadgets like mp3 players, while a few Tower Records stores sell books as well, such as the stores in Brea, California and Sacramento. All these product lines and more are also available at Tower.com, which got its start in 1995 as one of the first music retailers to set up shop on the Internet. In New York City, twin Tower Records stores straddle lower Broadway - one an annex that still sells vinyl records, and the other selling modern items (CDs, DVDs, etc.). The store in Greenwich Village was famous in the 1980s for selling albums of European New Wave bands not yet popular in the U.S. and was a noted hangout for teenagers from through out the metropolitan area.
Tower Records entered bankruptcy for the first time in 2004. Factors cited were the heavy debt incurred during its aggressive expansion in the 1990s, growing competition from mass discounters, and internet piracy. Selling most CDs at list price didn't help either. [2]
In 2005 the company introduced TouchMedia scan and listen stations into its stores. These stations allow the customer to scan the bar code of an item, and listen to audio clips from the album in question. As with similar listening stations in other record stores, track samples do not exist for many albums, especially import titles, but most at least have entries with information from a central database, and the majority of more popular titles do have samples.
In spring of 2006, the company introduced the Tower Records Insider program. This program gives the customer a card they can scan during transactions, which can be used to earn coupons/rewards/benefits/etc.
On June 27, 2006, Tower Records launched its own digital download store[3].
On August 20, 2006, Tower Records filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy[4] for the second time in order to facilitate a purchase of the company prior to the holiday shopping season.
On October 6, 2006, Great American Group won an auction of the company's assets and commenced liquidation proceedings the following day, which included going-out-of-business sales at all U.S. Tower Records locations, which are expected to close by the end of the year[5], although the Tower Records web site still remains open.
[edit] Tower Records in the United Kingdom
Originally Tower Records was just a London-based concern, with the store at 1 Piccadilly Circus being joined by a couple of smaller outlets (for example Kensington High Street). However by the start of the 1990s the chain had grown to encompass a number of other stores, with large entertainment stores also selling movies, books, magazines and games in Birmingham and Glasgow, as well as a number of smaller stores that had been purchased from rival American retailer Sam Goody when it had left the UK marketplace (for example of this express format - Weston-Super-Mare).
However with tough trading conditions in the UK market, as well as the company's trouble in the States, the firm followed Sam Goody in retreating from the UK market. The London stores in Piccadilly and Kensington were sold to Virgin Group, who for a while traded under the Tower brand at the former site until the store could be fully refurbished, while the other stores were closed.
[edit] References
- ^ Tower Theatre Homepage. Retrieved on 2006-08-26.
- ^ It also sold off its profitable Japanese operation (which continues to operate under the Tower Records name) and reduced the total number of stores it operated in the United States.
- ^ Reuters. "Tower stacking up downloads", News.com, 2006-06-26. Retrieved on 2006-08-22.
- ^ Dow Jones Newswires. "Tower Records files for bankruptcy", Chicago Tribune, 2006-08-22. Retrieved on 2006-08-22.
- ^ Karen Matthews. "Music Fans Mourn Loss of Tower Records", Associated Press, 2006-10-13. Retrieved on 2006-10-13.
