I've made this point before, so I'll keep it short, but I think the record
business is the only business that caters to the light consumer.  Your HMVs
and Towers are geared to the people who buy 0-5 CDs a year.  I used to love
browsing in record stores; now when I buy CDs I almost always do so online,
from someplace that will have the inventory to meet the shopping list of my
heavy purchaser needs.  Like Not Lame.  Even like Stewart's Newbury Comics;
haven't been in one in ages, but they carry the Instant Live CDs that Clear
Channel produces at their online store.  I still like browsing the cool
indie stores of course, but there are fewer and fewer of them.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net>
To: <audities@smoe.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: HMV in NYC, R.I.P.?


>
> Christopher wrote:
> > I'm not one to sob for any chain that charges upwards of $19 as
> > their
> > standard CD price, but it *is* a passing of an era, no longer to be
> > able to
> > count on a brick-and-mortar with huge (i.e. wide *and* deep)
> > selection for
> > those days when you know what you want and don't want to wait for
> > your
> > favorite internet retailer to ship it to you.  And of course, a
> > not-inconsequential side-effect, the art of browsing is nearly dead
> > now too.
>
> Well, of course a huge part of the problem in both HMV and Tower is
> that I would know what I wanted, but THEY didn't -- both chains had
> fairly limited selections when it came to indie-label and import
> items.  And, as you say, they also wanted me to pay full list price.
> >
> > Maybe I'm naïve (okay, I'm definitely naïve), but I have to wonder,
> > did it
> > have to be this way?  Might there not have been a way for HMV to do
> > what the
> > other chains can't seem to, put together a staff who are excited
> > about the
> > product they're selling, to provide customers a real service?
>
> In other words, to act like -- and yes, I'm going to talk about them
> again -- Newbury Comics.  Again, it's a small chain -- although there
> are now more Newbury Comics stores than there are HMVs in the US, and
> at something like 22 locations, I bet there's more than there are
> Virgin Megastores too -- but they're a chain that knows who their
> customers are and what their customers want, and they're not out to
> completely hose us, either.  Newbury Comics knows that if I come in on
> release day to buy, say, SMILE and they have it for something like
> $11.88, that's money that I have left in my pocket that I might be
> willing to spend on, say, the new Snow Patrol album for $7.99 and the
> new Bevis Frond for their regular list price of $14.99.  Because I
> think I'm getting a bargain, I end up spending MORE money and buying
> more albums than I would have if I'd spent $18.99 on the same Brian
> Wilson album at HMV!  Simple retail logic, something that most stores
> don't have anymore.
>
> And if the art of browsing is dead, then nobody's told the folks at
> Newbury Comics.  Hell, I can be in there for hours.
>
> It can be done.  It's just that only one company (that I know of) is
> doing it.
>
> S
>
>