Newbury Comics : Are they still healthy...looks questionable...

I shopped at the Avon store recently and was pleasantly surprised at their stock, tons of DVD's and Blu's , they redid the layout of the store and the merchandise
is at the front.......surprising.

As Kevin states above it seems that their Mall locations bury the CD's/dvd's at the back with clothing in the front , I noticed this at the Natick store which now is in the Natick Mall.
The Braintree store is really bad , I went a couple weeks ago and the DVD/Blu section was very weak........really sad as I used to like visiting when the store was next to Bertucci's and I used
to find all kinds of cool stuff. Richie Parsons was the manager back then and he would stick really rare CDs in boxes under the regular stock cd's in the bins, it was fun to sit on the floor and
flip thru the boxes.

These Mall stores suck, I seriously will not be visiting any of them on a regular basis, I used to drive up to Natick a lot to check out their store , but not now.

 

Seriously-
If you want Vinyl- do not waste your time in any of the other Newbury's. If you want NEW- go to Newbury St, and to a lesser extent- Rt 1 in Norwood.
If you want USED- go to Rt 1 in Norwood.

I was at Norwood for their 35th Anniversary, and I was in the Newbury St store April 13th when we went to the Boston Marathon Expo.

Chris

 

Ah so its in the mall now - I had a rough day in Nashua a few weeks ago; stopped by the Ensemble hi fi store only to find it out of business - then I drove over to the old Newbury Comics location on the DW Highway only to find it closed down as well! Finally went to Savers just to find some vinyl to look at and not completely waste my trip. Sheesh.

 

How is Savers for vinyl? I've never been.

Also, is there a Bull Moose in Nashua or is Salem the only one on the NH/MA line?

 

What?? Ensemble closed? Aw crap!

 

No Bull Moose in Nashua afaik .... the Savers was disappointing, but you never know with thrift stores, on any given day someone can dump a big collection off.

 

I haven't been in there yet, but another hi fi shop called Audio Visual Therapy opened up, a bit further south near the Best Buy.

 

Ensemble is now Audio Visual Therapy, I didn't know they moved. The Nashua Newbury Comics moved to the Pheasant Lane Mall

 

The slow decline of Newbury Comics continues, today i visited the Grand Opening of their Cambridge Galleria Mall store.
What was I thinking?, oh I remember I received a $25 Gift card for X-Mas and since it was a Buy 2 get 1 free sale I figured I would
make out nicely. Think again , I left the store with NADA....the whole front of the store is clothing, you would never know they sold music
and dvd's/blu's when entering the store.
They make the old FYE stores look like Tower Records, seriously you could not spend more than 10-15 minutes looking thru all the CD's and Dvd's.
There is very little to browse, and I am always perplexed that they never really give any space to blu's, I couldn't even find one Criterion Blu, In fact I own more criterions than they stock.....like a lot more!

I give these guys a few more years and I bet you will see these Mall stores start to fold up, really the whole set up looked very weak, very disappointing...I really miss the old days.

 

I don't think a dedicated music store can make it without a strong, aggressive used section, which requires an expertise that can't really be delegated, programmed or even shared.

 

Bull Moose is still big in Maine.

Evan

 

I know about their Maine presence but was looking for locations closer to Mass.

 

Portsmouth, NH and Salem, NH I believe have units

 

Was in the Leominster, MA store the other day, cd section has shrunk by half, used vinyl had some old Heart albums, and their magazine rack had outdated Mojo magazine. Very sad. But wait, are those socks with marijuana leafs! Stupid hats?
Backpacks?

 

This past summer I went to the Portsmouth store, Just Great!....I wish Bullmoose would put a store in MA.

 

So sad, I remember the original store on Newbury St. when all they stocked were indie bands. I still to this day own vinyl that I bought at that store. The Lyres
Mission Of Burma, Peter Dayton Band, New Order, Talking Heads, Suicide....etc......you could barely find that type of music in their stores today.

I think their business decisions will play into their eventual demise more so than the current retail climate, that will be just used as an excuse.
Some where along the line they jumped the shark so to speak. They abandoned their business model and with the current movement into malls their hardcore clientele.

 

There's still life in this brand I think. I was at the Avon store today and came home with happy with a number of purchases.

 

I live close to the Avon store and I think it is one of their better stores. I always find good stuff there.

 

I pop into both the Harvard and Newbury locations pretty regularly, and they are always pretty crowded. I don't know about other locations, but these two still seem to have a reasonable selection of CDs and vinyl to me. Although it is true, that they seem to focus more on lifestyle products now....they even had a huge 70% off clearance of their graphic novels recently to make more space for clothing, etc.

They also have had buy 2 get 1 free on new music for a couple of years now, since that is where I usually get my box sets....
I remember back around 2005, the Lebanon, NH location used to have buy 1 get 1 free on music pretty regularly! Although if I remember correctly that was for used music only.

 

Hmm, if clothing is their focus now, maybe they should rename the stores to Newbury Clothing? Do they even sell comics at their stores anymore?

 

Agreed. Everyday Music have a very large used section for music and dvd and they do quite well.

 

As do their NON-MALL stores in Norwood and Bellingham.

 

Went to Bellingham a week or two back. Was disappointed, but not surprised, to see the CD section cut significantly. Came away with nothing.

 

Just came back from the Avon store and it is closing!,....Tonight!!.......can ya believe that?

I just happened to drop by and saw the parking lot packed, 30% off everything (Cd's,DVD's & Blu's). Would have been nice to notify their customers thru email.
Damn, that was the closest store and actually my favorite store, always found good stuff in there. I guess business was not too great (maybe that is why i always scored!).

Ya gotta wonder if this is the beginning of the long goodbye...........