HMV Canada to close all 102 stores April 30 (Sunrise to take over approx 70 HMV stores)*

I suspect several labels/studios have "running tabs" with Sunrise where a certain percentage of stock has not been paid. Maybe 60-70% paid on everything. Pretty sure HMV had to buy everything upfront, so money just sat on the shelves. Some labels/studios are missing or under represented at Sunrise because they want wholesale price upfront.

Selling used CDs and vinyl is and added business angle that HMV did not do. Sunrise have said it will take more than a year to roll out all features of what they want the chain to be.

Ditching the "flagship HMV" stores in Vancouver/Toronto alone probably $5,000 a day due to rents.

 

They are going to have to re-examine their pricing structure however if they do want to attract the serious buyer, as well as the Casual buyer.

I was in two stores yesterday for the fist time in a while and some of the prices are a little eye watering, the Sgt Pepper pic disc for example is $50 and the Christmas flexi box is $140, once you include tax. The deluxe version of the new U2 album on cd is $20, its $15 in Walmart!

 

Haven't been to the Barrie location since September, but I agree the staff there's been approachable and enthusiastic. I do wish they'd gotten Georgian Mall instead of the decidedly more downscale Bayfield Mall, though. One of the staff noted that RioCan seemed to feel a record store wasn't upscale enough for Georgian's aspirations.

That said, I've made a point of shopping the Newmarket Upper Canada Mall Sunrise every couple weekends since October. Oxford manages that mall. There're always a half-dozen people browsing at 8 p.m. on a Friday, but last week was pleasantly bananas. I counted 18-25 people at any time during my 20 minutes: people who looked like they had music collections, young'uns scanning the DVD section and display racks with purpose, and parents-with-toddlers picking stocking-stuffers. I nearly took a picture, it seemed so beyond-the-norm. Christmas magic I'm sure, but heartening to see. One of the staff commutes from Barrie. I asked about the live New Order title, almost as a test, and he not only asked the right clarifying question but came back with a detailed response. I think he's second-in-command here. We've talked a bit now each time I've been in: he's really proud of the strides taken by Barrie and Newmarket both, and while they'll never replace my downtown Toronto indies in my heart, I've happily bought a whack of new titles. I still buy on CD a lot, saving my vinyl buys for online, and the CD pricing seems generally good (two-to-four dollars below downtown Toronto indies). Catalogue CD stock is still hopelessly spotty unless it's a metal cornerstone act, it seems. I think catalogue's permanently the purview of the online vendor.

But Newmarket had the month-old Jan & Dean Filet Of Soul Redux on the Omnivore imprint?!? Who orders that for a mall store in 2017? I'm buying it next time!

 

Really?

As per comments, not exactly the same experience encountered by everyone.

 

Great deals to be at Urban Outfitters. I generally pay $5-12 there when they have extra discounts on sale merchandise. Will college kids are paying $50 for the Grease soundtrack, the stuff I like winds up in the clearance bin: my bloody valentine, Johnny Cash, Nick Waterhouse, Velvet Underground, Billy Bragg to name a few

Right now they have buy one get 50% off a second purchase, so even that would give you 25% off something like the new Spoon LP, regular price of $28.

 

"What's a cartridge?"

 

Oh that’s a cartridge... Nice, it also has a volume control knob at the back!

Seriously, nice cart Gary!

 

The only question is when they will go bankrupt

 

Just throwing this out there..
Montreal is in serious need of a great record store where HMV was on St.Catherine.
HMV might have sucked as a company, but damn do I miss checking everything out.

EDIT: I just remembered that the few times I did happen to buy any vinyl from them, there was ALWAYS flaws. So I started going to the independent record shops.

 

Sadly the main shopping street in Montreal has no mega record store since HMV closed. A small walk will bring you to Cheap Thrills which offer some interesting stuff in a very indie environment...

The crooked stairs to the second floor worth the trip to the place!!! »

 

I have made a point to NOT show up high or drunk when shopping at Cheap Thrills. Those Stairs are crazy haha but really really nice people who are usually there.

 

The DVD selection at the St. Catharines location has improved over the past few months. That's enough to get me to visit the store more frequently, especially since the DVD/Blu-ray selection at Best Buy is now almost non-existent and continues to shrink at Walmart.

The vinyl pricing is all over the place, but I've picked up a few albums that my local indie store didn't have and would have been more expensive to order from Amazon. Sunrise is definitely not my first choice for music, but I do want them to succeed and will continue to make the occasional purchase there to support them. I've already bought more from them this year than I had from HMV during the last few years they were around.

 

Can't find anything about Boxing day yet, since most stores have their sales known by now. HMV got this wrong their last several years and I'm watching closely if Sunrise make the same mistake.

In 2016 the Ontario Sunrise stores had 20-30% off regular priced DVD/Blus.

 

20% off regular priced CDs and vinyl. Not sure about DVD/BR.

 

that's for this year?

 

That’s what I am told. If it isn’t though...don’t blame me...blame the employee that quietly gave me the heads up.

 

That's great to hear. It's been too long out here without Boxing Day sales on CDs/DVDs since HMV never did sales.

 

Sunrise used to also do a few big deals in Dec 26 only. One year I got Wilco The Album on vinyl for about $10. The next year it as Coldplay Mylo Xyloto for about $15 on vinyl.

 

I've posted on this thread a couple of times about issues with their pricing, particularly on boxsets. If I recall correctly, I was complimentary in some of my most recent posts on the thread about individual albums being at a reasonable price - within a few dollars of online prices, which I think is fair.

I was in the Kitchener store this morning and couldn't believe what I saw - again it's to do with boxsets. They have the mono and stereo The Beatles boxsets. At the moment, the mono retails for CAD399.99 online at MusicVaultz while the stereo is CAD349.99. Now, I'm totally okay with their prices being a wee bit higher than online - it's perfectly reasonable, and is likely to always be the case (although I actually got the new Neil Young LP today for $10 less than Amazon.ca is selling it for). However, the mono box was CAD569 and the stereo was...CAD749!! CAD400 more expensive that getting it direct from Universal via MusicVaultz (and that's before you factor in the increased tax add-ons) for the stereo and CAD170 for the mono! Unbelievable. I can't think of any reason that such a high price is justified.

I'm happy that they are here and I will continue to use them occasionally for records when they aren't available in the local independents, but I can't see me ever getting a boxset from them. I may actually contact them as it, surely, has to be an error....right?

 

If they want to bring in serious buyers then they have to work out their pricing and selection! Bringing more ‘overused’ records will not cut it for me.

 

Dropped in again, pleased with the cd selection (purchased 2), and had a nice conversation with the 30ish? clerk.

 

Vinyl Is Spinning Huge Sales For Sunrise Records

Vinyl Is Spinning Huge Sales For Sunrise Records
Jan 24, 2018 by David Farrell 0


Sunrise Records’ president Doug Putman doesn’t buy the popular mantra that music sales are cooked. Proof of this is the fact that his chain of nationwide stores sold close to a half-million vinyl albums last year.

That’s right. Sunrise sold just shy of 500,000 vinyl recordings and most with an average sticker price of $29.99.

And that’s just the half of it.

Last year, Putman expanded his Ontario-based 12-store chain by negotiating leases from mall owners left holding the bag when HMV declared bankruptcy, and in the space of a year grew to 82 stores nationwide. Today he employs about 800 staff working full or part-time in Sunrise locations, and he has plans for more expansion in 2018.

The 33-year-old doesn’t sound whipped having accomplished in record time what a lot of other chains have failed at.

In a phone interview yesterday, Putman said he plans to open another four to five stores in 2018 and further expand business with a transactional website.

“We accomplished a lot in 2017. We got all the (new) stores opened by August 1, and that required lots of work. We’re pleased with where we are at. It was a great year and all the suppliers – labels, studios – are very happy with our performance. Our indie bands are doing well for us too. We take consignments on local acts with CDs and vinyl, and they are performing well.”

It’s a success story echoed by Universal Music Canada. “We’ve believed in Doug’s vision so partnered with him early on,” company president and CEO Jeffrey Remedios says, adding that “his team’s results have exceeded our lofty expectations.”

This kind of endorsement isn’t easy to come by in the retail business and in particular the record retailing business.

In all, Sunrise has about 100 suppliers and inventories 5,000 SKUs in its 120K-square-foot Ancaster, ON headquarter.

Looking forward, Putman expects to open four or five more stores in 2018, but there’s another area for growth that got lost in last year’s store expansion.

“The strategy this year is to execute what we had planned in 2017, and that is the launch of a website that can handle online sales.

“We ended up delaying our online presence to focus on getting the stores done right last year,” Putman explains. “Our plan now is to get a fully functioning transactional site up in the next three to four months. We recently surveyed our customers, and the overwhelming feedback we received was that this is what they most wanted from us, and that’s what we are working on giving them now.”

Until he acquired the five-store chain from the Perlman brothers (Malcolm and Roy) in 2014, Putman had no connection to music other than being a big fan of pop and vinyl. His outsider status perhaps made him an ideal candidate to find a niche in the market that could be successful.

Four years ago CD sales were in a tailspin as consumers shifted to digital files largely purchased from iTunes' stores. Putman’s prior background was in running his family's business, Everest Toys, a distribution company representing clients such as Mattel and Hasbro.

He knew about inventory systems, his background was in sales, and he believed in software and that there is still a sizeable audience wanting to own physical copies, whether they be board games or recordings.

Astutely, he wasn’t going to fall into the trap of over-stocking his stores or trying to be trendy. The average store size is 2500-square-feet, all located in suburban malls and secondary markets. He says he’d love to have mainstreet stores in cities such as Toronto and Montreal but admits that the rents are too high to make financial sense. "We are always looking, but for now we haven't found a way to make it work," he says.

So, it’s a mean and lean operation he operates that offers a mix of goods that make it more pop emporium than a pure record store, but the customers keep coming in and the till keeps ringing in sales.

As for its inventory mix, the average Sunrise Records store inventories a ratio of 30-percent CD, 20-percent vinyl, 20-percent Blue-ray and video, and 20-percent apparel, toys and games. His split on catalogue to currents is 65/35 and CDs vary in price. Front-line new releases on average are priced at $12.99 and catalogue titles run between $5 and $10.

He has one more big surprise for 2018, but for now he’s keeping it up his sleeve.

 

Thanks for the article. It's good news that they are doing well.