Looks like HMV in the UK may survive after all...

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by Sound of the Suburbs, Feb 3, 2019.

  1. wallpaperman

    wallpaperman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Edinburgh
    Remember that despite DVD/Blu Ray sales going down in 2018, they will still shift a substantial amount of these, not plus all the other odds and end they sell like tshirts and little plastic figures?

    That's gonna add a lot to the turnover as well.
     
  2. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    It's certainly true that Hmv sell more physical products than Amazon,too. But they also need to get the message out about their prices bring on par with or cheaper than amazon. We know from this thread that many, if not most,people are oblivious to that fact. That isn't helping.
     
    Eric_Generic and hamicle like this.
  3. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Wish we still had our HMV.

    Sunrise Records took over and they are an expensive store. Surprised they are still up and running....
     
  4. DML71

    DML71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
  5. wallpaperman

    wallpaperman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Edinburgh
    Good news, one of the members on here, and posted on this thread, is from the Bath area if I remember rightly, they'll be delighted. :righton:
     
  6. G00dVibrations

    G00dVibrations Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Its a HMV in Bath, not a Fopp. Good for people in Bath that is reopening - I think otherwise the only place in town for records or CDs is Sainsburys.
     
  7. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    It's interesting how landlords will start dropping their rent to more reasonable prices when there is a chance that their property won't be let at all for months to come!
     
  8. DML71

    DML71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    A good few of the stores are within INTU centres be great if they could manage a deal with them.
     
  9. DML71

    DML71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    You are indeed correct. The article I read wasn't crystal clear and I misread it.

    "HMV’s iconic Fopp Glasgow Byres and Bath stores have both resumed service after several days of being closed"
     
  10. DiBosco

    DiBosco Forum Resident

    Location:
    West Yorkshire, UK
    One of my best friends used to work for Maplin, scouting out places for new stores and he said that Landlords will more often than not refuse to lower rent, even if it means their property sitting empty for years on end. So, this dude who has taken over HMV has done incredibly well if he has managed to renegotiate.

    AFAIK we're losing both the Trafford Centre HMV and Fopp (the latter is the bigger bummer) in Manchester, so the only one left will be the Arndale one.
     
  11. sacdfan

    sacdfan Forum Resident

    Location:
    United Kingdom
    My local HMV was in the Royal Victoria Centre, Tunbridge Wells. It was still closed with no sign of life when I walked passed on Monday together with many other shop units which have closed there over the last year or so. No other similar shops are left in the area and I just hope they can come up with a deal with their landlord and reopen.
     
  12. stagnation

    stagnation Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bridlington UK
    I love Fopp - especially the manchester store. Very rarely come out of there with nothing... i don't know why HMV didn't rebrand some of the smaller stores as FOPPs
     
    Man at C&A and Pop_Zeus like this.
  13. Fuller

    Fuller Forum Resident

    Excellent idea.

    Nearest FOPP to me was Bristol, I had not been for a while but was going to go there soon and load up.

    Let's hope they can open more FOPP stores.
     
    jamo spingal likes this.
  14. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    It's quite a different demographic though. I was chatting to a Fopp manager a few weeks ago. They don't stock chart pop music really, it's aimed at more, I guess, 'serious' music fans and film geeks. That works best I think in maybe the big cities where they have a HMV already and can have a Fopp for the specialised stuff more. It wouldn't really work and be fair if you had a smaller city where you changed the HMV to a Fopp as you would be excluding potential customers by not stocking certain things.
     
    Pouchkine likes this.
  15. Studio_Two

    Studio_Two Forum Resident

    I wonder if that is a direct consequence of less new disks being sold on the high street in the first place.
     
  16. hoggydoggy

    hoggydoggy Forum Resident

    Quite agree – the loss of the HMV in the Trafford Centre is no great personal loss to me (it just makes it 100% likely that I have absolutely no need to ever spend any time in there, other than to collect/drop off wife & kids!), though I’m obviously sorry people are out of work.

    Losing Fopp, however, is a crying shame – even as a subsidiary of HMV, it still had a unique character and a layout & choice of stock (particularly vinyl) that actively encouraged impulse buying, which is just something I don’t feel in any branch of HMV at all.

    At some stage, the new owners are gonna have to do something with these shuttered-up shop units – all the stock is in there! – and I only hope that, when the analysis of performance is done, that the Manchester Fopp is revived…
     
    DiBosco and Pop_Zeus like this.
  17. jimod99

    jimod99 Daddy or chips?

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON
    Which was exactly one of the main reasons the original Fopp failed when it expanded too quickly and opened branches in many smaller towns across the UK.
     
    Jim B. likes this.
  18. jamo spingal

    jamo spingal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Agree, I much prefer the Fopp experience. They obviously think the HMV brand is more iconic, but survey music fans and I bet it would say Fopp.
     
    Jim B. likes this.
  19. windfall

    windfall Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    Fopp seems to me to be much closer to the new owner's template of deep back catalogue than HMV has been for many years.
     
    HastingsBoy likes this.
  20. jimod99

    jimod99 Daddy or chips?

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON
    The reality in Canadian stores is that although when they took over HMV in Canada they promised the same as what they are promising in the UK its not really happened and all the Sunrise stores there are little different from the HMV stores they replaced.

    Those in the UK shouldn't get too carried away with the new owners promises.
     
    Pouchkine likes this.
  21. windfall

    windfall Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    Sure. I'm not holding my breath! I am expecting our little store in Winchester to be pretty much the same six months from now.
     
  22. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    I think that's true - although it's fair to say that my local HMV does stock a fair amount of "back catalogue" material anyway. But I do find much of the precious shelf-space is wasted by a lack of care.

    There's space for about ten to fifteen Mozart CDs in my local HMV at the moment - and yet they have five different versions of the Requiem. Pointless. Two are needed at most - but by all means get a different recording in when they sell one. Likewise, in the jazz section, there are often multiple different CDs for an artist, but they often contain the exact same music. Yes, it's a bit of a nightmare if you don't know your stuff given the PD company releases (although many of them in the jazz world are excellent), but my local HMV doesn't need four copies of Atomic Basie under four different titles.

    Bearing that in mind, I'm hoping the new way shops are suppposed to be able to order their stock might change that. If you're going to appeal to the deeper music lover and get them to part with more cash (which I'm happy to do), there has to be surprises on the shelves. It's no longer the case where we suddenly learn of something we didn't know was available, as the internet prevents that, but we can still be presented by more obscure titles. Throw in a Pablo Basie title, for example. Or perhaps a little-known Mozart opera. Something needs to be there to make us think "hmm, that's interesting, I'll take a punt on it" - and that's more likely to happen if shelf space is managed creatively and sensibly with as much choice as possible.
     
  23. HastingsBoy

    HastingsBoy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Yeovil
    My local HMV in Yeovil is staying open but seems to be taking an age to re-stock! They aren't getting new releases in either, the new Bowie live releases weren't there when I visited today. I guess they are waiting for direction on format of the stores but they need to get a shift on if they are hoping to survive! I too think the FOPP model is the way ahead, stock more varied artists and deeper stuff of better known artists.
     
  24. The Lew

    The Lew Senior Member

    Swansea and Cardiff stores staying open. Virtually no competition. Don't buy much from them but when I'm passing you've gotta go in.
     
    Sound of the Suburbs likes this.
  25. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    Yes, mine is taking a while too, although I didn't go in today to see the new releases. But there is a lot of shelves to fill there - and while it seems like weeks, I think it's only ten days since the announcement of the takeover.
     

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