How Can You Make Record Stores Popular Again
Why Is Tower Records Coming Back At present, of All Times?
It's trying to offer something Amazon and Spotify tin can't.
Comebacks is a series about businesses that have made dramatic turnarounds during the pandemic, in partnership with Slate's Thrilling Tales of Modern Capitalism podcast. The following article is a written accommodation of an episode of Thrilling Tales.
In 1965, Heidi Cotler got a chore at Tower Records. She worked in the books department, which had opened not long afterwards the record shop did. The job suited her countercultural fashion. "At that place was no dress code. There was no hair lawmaking. As long every bit yous didn't smell and your butt wasn't hanging out, you were pretty much proficient to go. Yous had to wear shoes, most of the time."
Cotler says the vibe at Tower—what nosotros'd at present call its corporate culture—all came from its founder, Russ Solomon. He was absurd, he was free-spirited, and he hired lots of absurd and complimentary-spirited immature people to create the kind of company he wanted. He didn't care much well-nigh rules as long equally the task got done. "Nosotros ran on basically merely sheer idiocy for a long time," Cotler says, "and it worked because we adored Russ. He had respect for u.s.a., and in a business organization where you're being paid $ane.25 an hour, to be respected at nineteen or twenty years sometime is a pretty exciting thing. Y'all really accept to respect that and non screw it upwardly."
Tower staff of young misfits managed to make the business run, fifty-fifty if they sometimes used unorthodox methods. For example, at that place was a line item in some expense reports listing money spent on "hand truck fuel," aka cocaine.
The rowdy mood at Belfry was infectious. Customers came in to exist a part of it. "Y'all could spend hours in those little steamy record booths," Cotler recalls. "You could brand out, you could get loaded, you could exercise obscene things to each other. And the just thing that y'all had to do somewhen was to get out and allow somebody else use the booth."
Tower'south rise coincided with the rise of youth music culture. The shop became a sort of church where young people would gather to talk about music, look at album covers, and, with whatsoever luck, purchase something. And they did buy. Every bit Tower's revenue grew, Russ Solomon looked to expand beyond Sacramento—commencement to San Francisco in 1968, then to Los Angeles in 1970, where he established a legendary shop on the Sunset Strip, a place where fifty-fifty famous musicians similar Elton John would come to shop. In choosing where to expand, every bit in every other function of his business, Russ Solomon trusted his instincts about what was cool or would soon be cool. "He had this great talent of finding a really adept, inexpensive location in a place not still discovered and make a lease on information technology that fabricated sense," Cotler says.
By the end of the 1970s, Tower stores were popping upwards all over the Western U.S.—Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, Tempe. Then Tower moved east, starting in New York Urban center, in a then rather dour spot at Fourth and Broadway in 1983. Though Tower was a chain, its stores, in cities or in suburban retail quarters, were given a remarkable amount of autonomy, choosing inventory based on local tastes and leaving the decor to young employees, who ofttimes saw storefront displays equally an opportunity for creative expression. It somehow felt like your neighborhood record store and like a window into the counterculture. Heidi Cotler became caput of Belfry'southward books division and got an function in the corporate headquarters. Just even every bit Tower grew and its executive ranks swelled, she says, it still operated like a family: "We all felt that nosotros were part of the company. We all had a stake in it. It was not just Russ' company, it was our company too."
When compact discs became pop in the 2nd half of the 1980s, Belfry sales boomed again, with people replacing old vinyl and cassettes with this new wonder technology. Belfry stores lured foot traffic in with their absolutely massive inventory of CDs, sometimes four or five stories' worth of merchandise—classical, jazz, obscure indie bands. In the pre-net era, the ability to browse such a wide selection of music and to ask for recommendations from Tower's knowledgeable, if slightly gruff, sales staff was a existent draw. Tower continued to ride each new moving ridge of youth music civilisation—alternative rock, hip-hop. Belfry sales hit $1 billion in 1999, but it was right effectually then that everything seemed to get southward.
Russ Solomon'due south heart surgery in 1998 sidelined the company's No. 1 asset, the founder who'd guided it unerringly from the kickoff. His son was, by all reports, overmatched. Merely no ane, not even Russ Solomon, could have overcome the new obstacles in Tower's path. First, big-box chains like Walmart and Best Buy started selling CDs at deep discounts, undercutting Tower's prices and stealing its pes traffic. Then, as more people got broadband internet connections, they started sharing music illegally on services similar Napster. It'due south hard to compete with a music library many times larger than any Tower store could promise to fit, especially when all the music is free.
Meanwhile, Tower continued to expand its brick-and-mortar model, including internationally. At its peak, it had most 200 stores worldwide—London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, Mexico Metropolis, Buenos Aires. The company borrowed a lot of coin to finance its big ambitions, and when sales started shrinking, the debt became unmanageable. Tower lost $x million in 2000. It lost $90 1000000 in 2001. In 2004, it went bankrupt. Its final U.Southward. store airtight in 2006.
"It was rough," Cotler says. "And when it all went down the tubes, we all felt that nosotros'd been left, kicked to the curb as it were. And I recall at that place was a lot of anxiety, a lot of sadness, and a lot of depression. … I can't imagine you're going to interruption into tears over Amazon. I wait at Belfry as Brigadoon. It came, information technology was all over the identify, it was great, information technology was in that location, it was joyous, it was fun, it was irreverent, it was a smash—and it was gone. And people that even so recollect it are quondam people like me."
Russ Solomon died at age 92 in 2018, reportedly with a glass of whiskey in his hands. Tower had lain basically dormant for more than a decade at that indicate. Given the trends during that period, it made no sense to revive Tower in its old form. People were abandoning brick-and-mortar stores and moving their shopping to the net. Concrete media became a relic of the past, with streaming and downloads taking over from compact discs. Simply now it turns out that maybe Tower wasn't fully dead, just in a cocoon waiting to exist reborn.
Danny Zeijdel, the new CEO of Belfry Records, is trying to bring the brand back. As a teenager, Zeijdel loved Tower Records for its wide selection, sprawling square footage filled with bins of every kind of music imaginable. "I would become in with something in mind, permit'due south say a Bob Dylan album that I desire to buy, and cease up leaving with Fela Kuti, with William Onyeabor, with a David Byrne that I've never heard of, and with 10 CDs at a fourth dimension, that I listened to constantly for weeks." Zeijdel was raised in Curacao, a small island in the Caribbean area, and he says that whenever his family went to the U.Due south., "I would drive my parents crazy to go to a Belfry Records store."
Zeijdel ended up working in technology, helping to develop software for financial applications. He moved around and somewhen settled in Brooklyn. Along the style, he worked with and befriended a guy named Roald Smeets, a Dutch businessman whose family runs a huge, extremely lucrative financial services company. Zeijdel says that Roald Smeets caused the Belfry Records brand back in 2007, in an sale after the original Tower went caput. News reports from the time advise the price was a picayune more $4 one thousand thousand for the name, the logo, the website, all the intellectual property.
For many years, nothing much happened with Belfry, as people were getting their music from iTunes and and then Spotify. Just then an opportunity seemed to arrive: the unexpected comeback of vinyl records. People are rediscovering the pleasures of having a tape player. Last year, for the showtime fourth dimension since 1986, vinyl outsold compact discs. "Customers seem to want a more physical experience, like touching something, listening to a vinyl, a sense of community," Zeijdel says. "When nosotros were doing market research, a lot of kids, basically, what they're doing with vinyl is that's their lone fourth dimension and their quiet time. They put the phone abroad, they listen to a vinyl, and but then decompress."
Belfry planned to relaunch with a big coming-out party at the South by Southwest Festival in 2020. That didn't happen considering of COVID, so information technology's been a bit of a soft launch, but Belfry Records is back in business. Yous tin visit the website, buy a vinyl record, a CD, even a cassette tape, or slake your Tower nostalgia with a logo T-shirt. Everything comes to you wrapped in that familiar yellow bag that, if you're of a certain historic period, will bring back fond memories of taking home the new Liz Phair album.
If Tower tin can get the place people go to purchase vinyl, it might carve out a overnice niche. Simply there are a lot of problems here. Starting time of all, streaming and digital downloads still make up virtually 90 percent of music acquirement. To sell records is to play in a relatively small sandbox. And even within the world of physical media, yous've got a vicious competitor in Amazon, a tough foe for anyone selling and shipping anything. Danny seems to think that for Tower Records to get the place where people cull to store for music, in that location will have to be some emotional connection with the brand, some added value, some tribal bond.
One idea is to have in-business firm music experts—maybe customers pay a monthly subscription fee to access them, talk about records, become suggestions for new artists to try. "Just similar when I was a kid, going into the store and learning near music and the shop clerk or store specialist telling me, 'You need to buy this, you lot need to buy that. Have you heard of this person and this artist?' That'due south the stuff that we want to bring back, and nosotros're trying to do that online every bit much as we tin can," Zeijdel says. "Yes, maybe for a dollar cheaper, y'all can go to Amazon. But that'due south it, that's where it stops. You're non actually interacting. Nosotros're building out a site where it becomes something more."
Once in-person shopping becomes widely possible over again, Danny would love to open a few Belfry Records pop-up stores. Then, if things get well, perhaps a few flagship locations. For now, given the pandemic, this is on hold. Only even when normalcy returns, it'southward hard to contend that brick-and-mortar retail, specially on a large calibration, will exist a winning play. That sense of customs that the erstwhile Tower had, the place where people desire to piece of work because they love the scene, where people desire to hang out and shop because they desire to be around other people who love music, volition by and large demand to be re-created online. And that's a tall lodge.
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Source: https://slate.com/business/2021/03/tower-records-comeback-online-spotify-amazon.html
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