Times...They Are A-Changing....Sam Goody Closes 100s of Stores

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Times...They Are A-Changing....Sam Goody Closes 100s of Stores

Being a music enthusiast since I was a child, it's a no brainer that I've put in my time as a sales clerk, assistant manager, and manager for some music stores in my young adult years. I worked for 3 years at Vibes Music (which was under National Record Mart) on Marquette University's campus in Milwaukee, WI. That store closed in May 2001 due to being an 'underperforming' store for the chain. Ironically, it wasn't just our store because The NRM chain would fold totally by the end of 2001!

Luckily, I found myself another job with Tapeworld which would soon convert to FYE in the summer of 2001. But alas, the ever-changing music market and tough competition from big box retailers caused the Milwaukee location to close in January 2003. So the only major music entity that existed in the city from that point on was Sam Goody. They had a store in the Grand Avenue Mall where FYE was located and was it's only competitor. They also had stores at Bayshore Mall, Mayfair Mall, and nearby Brookfield Square mall.

Fast forward to February 2006 and ALL FOUR of these local Sam Goody stores are now closing...leaving Milwaukee in a strange situation of NO NATIONAL MUSIC CHAIN in the city. There's no Virgin Megastore, no Tower Records, no nothing. The only thing we have now are non-traditional stores (Borders, Barnes and Noble), big-box retailers (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc) and smaller local shops (Exclusive Company, DiscMan, Atomic, etc).

Read the story about the 341 Musicland locations that are closing at the link below. This includes Sam Goody and Suncoast stores. Some locations are losing both...and some just show a Sam Goody or just a Suncoast closing (for us in Milwaukee, it looks like both are closing at all locations even though they aren't listed that way in the story.) Feel free to leave your comments on this topic......

http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/7861.shtml

UPDATE: I've seen a LOT of blogs saying that Sam Goody/Suncoast everywhere are closing. This is a link to the .pdf about Musicland's reorganization (Chapter 11). It looks like it's about half of the stores closing.....not ALL of them. But you never know what has changed in recent weeks. Here is the link from Musicland's website: http://www.musicland.com/pdfs/GeneralFAQs.pdf