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Tower Records is a retail music chain based in Sacramento,
California, USA. It currently exists as an international franchise
and an online music store.
Starting on October 6, 2006, all Tower Records stores in the United
States prior to liquidation held "going out of business" sales
before final shutdown on the night of Friday, December 22, 2006.
Tower.com was purchased by a separate entity and will not be
affected by the retail store closings. Two Tower Records stores
still operate in Ireland, as well as seven in Colombia, five in
Mexico and a number in Japan and Malaysia.
History
Tower was founded in 1960 by Russ Solomon in Sacramento. The store
was named after his father's drugstore, which shared a building and
name with the Tower Theater, where Solomon first started selling
records. The first Tower Records store was opened in 1960 on Watt
Avenue in Sacramento, California.
Tower Records on the Sunset StripSeven years after its founding,
Tower Records expanded to San Francisco, opening a store in what was
originally a grocery store at Bay and Columbus streets. The chain
eventually expanded internationally to include stores in Canada, UK,
Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Ireland, Israel, UAE, Mexico, Colombia,
Ecuador, and Argentina. The store also established Tower Records
stores in Japan, but those stores split off from the main chain and
are now independent. Arguably the most famous Tower Records outlet
was the one located on the north side of Sunset Boulevard in West
Hollywood, California. Across the street was the Tower Video store,
also closed in 2006. In addition to CDs and cassette tapes, stores
also sold DVDs, PSP movies, video games, accessories, toys and
electronic gadgets like mp3 players, while a few Tower Records
stores sold books as well, such as the stores in Brea, California
and Sacramento. All these product lines are also available at
Tower.com, which got its start in 1995 as one of the first music
retailers to set up shop on the Internet. In New York City, twin
Tower Records stores operated on and near lower Broadway - one an
annex that sold vinyl records, and the other selling modern items
(CDs, DVDs, etc.). The store in the East Village was famous in the
1980s for selling albums of European New Wave bands not yet popular
in the U.S. and was a noted hangout for teenagers from throughout
the metropolitan area.
Bankruptcy
Tower Records entered bankruptcy for the first time in 2004. Factors
cited were the heavy debt incurred during its aggressive expansion
in the 1990s, growing competition from mass discounters, and
internet piracy.It also had a policy of selling most Compact Disc
recordings at list price.
Post-Bankruptcy
In 2005 the company introduced TouchMedia scan and listen stations
into its stores. These stations allow the customer to scan the bar
code of an item, and listen to audio clips from the album in
question. As with similar listening stations in other record stores,
track samples do not exist for many albums, especially import
titles, but most at least have entries with information from a
central database, and the majority of more popular titles do have
samples.
In spring of 2006, the company introduced the Tower Records Insider
program. This program gives the customer a card they can scan during
transactions, which can be used to earn
coupons/rewards/benefits/etc.
On June 27, 2006, Tower Records launched its own digital download
store.
Liquidation
A liquidating Tower Records store in Portland, OregonOn August 20,
2006, Tower Records filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time
in order to facilitate a purchase of the company prior to the
holiday shopping season.
On October 6, 2006, Great American Group won an auction of the
company's assets and commenced liquidation proceedings the following
day, which included going-out-of-business sales at all U.S. Tower
Records locations, the last of which closed on December 22, 2006.
The Tower Records website was sold separately.
FYE, a mall based music store chain, had acquired the two historic
Tower locations in its home base of Sacramento, California but later
backed out, stating that the "leases aren't what we thought they
were". Rasputin Music, a new/used music/video store based in the Bay
Area, is expanding in the Central Valley by acquiring the leases on
the Tower stores in Fresno, California and Stockton, California.
Tower Records Stockton, California location at 6623 Pacific Avenue
officially closed its doors on December 19, 2006 at 10:PM for good.
Rasputin Music replaced it on April 28, 2007. Rasputin's is also set
to move into Tower's former Mountain View, California location and
has moved their Pleasant Hill, California location to Tower's former
Concord, California location.
The Landmark Plaza location in Alexandria, VA was closed on December
18, 2006 and the Pike 7 Plaza (Tysons Corner) location in Vienna, VA
was closed on December 21, 2006. The famous 24 year-old Washington,
DC location closed a day later, as did the one in Atlanta at the
famous Piedmont and Peachtree Road location. On Friday, December 22,
2006 its last New York City outlet located on 1961 Broadway, just a
block north of the famous Lincoln Center on Manhattan's west side,
closed its doors along with the remaining outlets around the United
States.
Russ Solomon will open a record store in the old Tower building on
Broadway at 16th Street in Sacramento, said Andy Gianulias, a member
of the family that owns the property. The building was a Tower store
for 40 years, closing when the legendary chain went out of business
in late December, and sits across the street from the site where
Solomon began selling records in 1941. In October, Solomon dubbed
his new venture Resurrection Records. Andy Gianulias said Solomon
may choose a different name. "No way do I have the grandiose idea I
can open 100 stores," Solomon said. "That would be foolish. But one
or two stores? That's doable." As of May 2007 the former Tower
Records at Broadway in Sacramento is being transformed into Russ
Solomon's R5 Records. |
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