Forum - View topicNEWS: Musicland to Ask for Financial Relief from Vendors
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ACDragonMaster
 Posts: 405 |
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Sheesh, Suncoast too, now? Why don't they close down Sam Goody, Suncoast is one of the only decent stores to get DVDs, period, and I don't mean just anime. Even in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, which includes the Mall of America, Suncoast is one of the only places I can walk in looking for an older or somewhat lesser known DVD and be sure they have a reasonable chance either of having it, or at least knowing what it is.
Frankly, I think this whole thing just reeks of bad management in the upper levels. Because even ignoring the anime fandom, whenever I've been in Suncoast or MediaPlay I've seen at least as many people buying stuff as at any other store of comparable size and similar stuff. |
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adam_omega
 Posts: 256 Location: Seven Seas |
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It's not about selection...it's about prices and competition.
Granted Suncoast and Media Play might have had great selections, but let's face it...their prices suck. Charging full price when other places are going lower is what did them in (plus Best Buy screwing them over). The Internet and bigger chain stores offering lower prices finally won out over selection. |
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daggerbob
 Posts: 52 Location: Colorado, US |
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I checked with the Suncoast in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They still don't know if they will be one of the stores to close, but they said they probably won't since they are supposed to be one of the more profitable ones in their district. Talked to some of the local "independents" that carry anime and manga. Some of them are planning on expanding their inventories to cover the loss of Media Play and the pulling of manga from Suncoast. So not all is lost for our local otaku. |
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ACDragonMaster
Posts: 405 |
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I'm sure I can't be the only one who prefers actually walking into a store and perusing the selection when I'm just looking to see what's out there. And not to mention that preordering series I know I'm going to buy does make it a bit cheaper. Online sites are nice, but nothing beats being able to just pick up the physical copy and know you're going to have it. And why else would dealers rooms be so big a deal at cons, when you can find much of that same stuff traded online on Ebay? No shipping, for one thing, and you get to physically see what you're getting. |
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angieness
Posts: 162 Location: Columbus, OH |
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Today was the big call day, every week the store managers have a meeting. As of this moment no one knows what stores will be closing aside from ones that have already recieved notice. There is only one Suncoast and one Sam Goody in the city I'm in so I don't know how worried I should be. And customers are CONSTANTLY complaining about the horrendous selection the Best Buys in the area have. Most customers I get came from Best Buy so yeah it's not like BB is an option in my city.
Yeah Suncoast is more expensive but you also have to consider the fact that Best Buy sells televisions, stereo systems, appliances, etc. If one customer buys a television, a 20 inch tv dvd player combo runs about 149.99 according to Best Buy's website. In order for Suncoast to make that $150, we'd have to sell 4-5 DVDs at 29.99. So yeah because we're such a small store that sells a limited number of things, we have to charge full price. Another thing to consider is our new releases the week they come out are 19.99, which is Best Buy's price. If you reserve something, we normally hold it for 30 days. Those 30 days you can get the 19.99 sale price still. There's also the replay card, which today alone I had about 5 customers come in with over $50 in replay certificates. Our entire business is pretty much based around customer loyalty, something which can't be said about a lot of stores today. It's just depressing seeing the place I've gone to for anime for 10 years going down like this. Yeah I work for the company, but I've wanted to work at Suncoast since the day I got into anime. Like Jiyu, I was also hired because I like anime and because of my job, I've made a lot of friends with fellow anime fans. If the company goes down it'll be a huge loss for me as well as many other anime fans. |
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To-K
Posts: 2 |
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This is bad news, although I do the bulk of my shopping at Best Buy. I happen to work at the Ingram Book warehouse...and am I surprised to see the name mentioned outside the book industry much less in an anime article. Manga doesn't go out very often, and I hope all the manga returns doesn't hurt us too bad.
I was wondering where all the manga in Suncoast went. |
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ACDragonMaster
Posts: 405 |
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I agree. I took full advantage of Replay and reserving titles I knew I was going to buy. Along with occasional sales, I could get what I wanted at a reasonable price. And I've always liked being able to actually browse through and look at what's there rather than try to dig through a website...
Even in the Minneapoils-St. Paul area of Minnesota, Suncoast stores were widely known to be the store to buy anime at. The only store with a comparable selection was Source, and unless you happened to be in just the right corner of the cities it was quite a drive away. So yeah, this is just absurd, I find it hard to believe that if managed well, the stores would really be making that little profit... |
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OtakuAne1
Posts: 7 |
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Quite honestly, I'm not too surprised to see this happening. I used to get all my anime purchases at Suncoast. But as soon as I found out that Best Buy sold for at least $5-10 less, more and more of my purchases started going to them. Where as Best Buy is willing to price match, Musicland doesn't. That hurts buyer loyalty.
Let's face it: cheaper alternatives are out there. If they really wanted to keep up profits, they'd do all they can to save the stores that are closing. As it stands, I know of probably 2-3 stores that will probably close. Honestly, I won't be sad to see them go. Their staff sucks (at those particular locations), but that's another rant for another day. |
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Kaliope
Posts: 2 |
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Media Play stores did in fact price match. It was a routine I went through almost everyday with Anime fans "This is 19.99 at Best Buy...but I don't wanna drive down there...price match it." And we did. I stopped working at Media Play last week..and it hurt a lot. Luckily I have since found another job and your talk about lack of customer loyalty..at least 15 customers came and asked where I was working next so they knew where to take their business. But I digress....
Ingram taking their books out Sam Goody and Suncoast sucks, those stores need the income, I don't want to see other people go through what we went through. Most of the people who work at SG and SC are great people who just want to help out other Anime/Manga fans... and I hope things get better.. maybe since they have filed Bankruptcy they can get theis ish together and start to rebuild the companies. |
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Advent_Nebula
Posts: 932 Location: Colorado |
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Well the closest Suncoast to me is now closing.
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Jiyu
Posts: 3 |
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As an employee, I'm not surprised either... it's been a long time coming. I'm sorry you've had bad staff experience; the crew I work with is totally awesome... with the exception of my boss ^^; As far as price matching goes, we cannot afford to do it. We're specialty stores who rely on DVDs to make profit. I don't have $1000 appliance sitting on my sales floor to sell to make up for profit like Best Buy does. Also, Best Buy does not always have better prices. My grandparents... being stupid... got me a gift certificate for them. I was like cool, I can pick up the last volume of Jubei-chan 2, they'll probably have it a little cheaper. Um, no... it was $30 just like in my own store... Audition was $20... just like in my own store. Best Buy is not caring as much these days, I hate to tell you. I'll tell you what business is killing us... Wal-Mart... Not a day goes by that I don't have some red-neck come in and tell me Wal-Mart has it cheaper and gripe at me like it will lower prices. 
I'm sure angieness will agree with me there. :3 And just like angieness, if my store closes... it will be a truly sad day... not just because I'm out of work, but because I've made friends with most of my loyal customers. I can shoot the breeze with them. Heck, I've counciled some of them at times. I've gone out after work with several of them... have their phone numbers and emails... swapped anime with them. You don't get that kind of friendship from a big store. |
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Tonboko
 Posts: 10 |
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I don't have a Suncoast near me, but I can say that my Media Play never charged retail on anything. Most $29.99 anime dvds were marked down to $27.99 at the most, more often to $23.99. New stuff was almost always $19.99 for the first week or two. I guess prices were not the same at all the Media Plays. What I do not understand is if Musicland is hurting for money, why did they not just close the stores that were losing money and keep the ones making profits open? I know it was not just my Media Play that was profiting. Its like cutting off the whole leg for a gangrenous toe. |
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rascalking
 Posts: 59 |
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btw.....the news headline states that musicland "ownes" ......but its supposed to be "owes"......just wnated to give the ANN staff headsup
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PEAC
Posts: 4 |
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Suncoast and Sam Goody had this coming for years. With Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-mart, Target, and small anime stores, it's very hard to compete in this market today
Since I work for Wal-mart and I'm a department manager, I see what happens behind the scenes before I didn't. For instance, every week we will go to our competitors (all of them mentioned above,except for local anime stores) and we will beat their prices. With a big push in Electronics. Now this is not true in all stores, not every store will do this but our store does and must be done every Tuesday. Now with customers complaining to other stores, that Wal-Mart has the cheapest price, why are you selling this price? They can go fly a kite. People who are rude, completely uncalled for attitude should not be shopping. I shop at best Buy all the time for electronics...you know why because Wal-mart will not agree to have a warranty program like Best Buy and I bought a 36 inch TV for $500 and sure enough 1 year and 3 days, it broke and I was screwed. But enough of that...back to the topic....Suncoast around me was the best thing to go when anime was first starting out.Now today other retailers and online retailers are getting in the act and offering better deals. New releases for us on Tuesday are always $18.88 or lower, because of Best Buy or Suncoast or Target. Do we sell out quicker, hell yes. Sam Goody....I'm surprised they lasted this long. With the world of mp3's, IPOD's,satelite radio, and other stores who sell alot cheaper than Sam Goody. If you work in retail, everyone should know this...it comes a time when even the mighty giants fall. Suncoast when they were brand new company, they were unstoppable. But now, it looks like they are throwing in the towel for some stores, in example Montgomery Wards (some young kids might not know this one) 128 years in business, all gone...everything must come to an end. Unfortunely for Wal-Mart, I dont see it in the near future but sometime, there is going to be something even bigger than a Wal-Mart, that will put Wal-Mart on it's knees. |
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angieness
Posts: 162 Location: Columbus, OH |
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http://docs.bmccorp.net/musicland/docs/nysb_1-06-bk-10064_88.pdf
HUGE list of all the details about the bankruptcy and list of stores being CONSIDERED for closing, my store is one of them. Page 63 is where the list of stores starts and these are NOT final. According to my District Manager these are stores that have a possibility of being closed and nothing is final. My store is the only one in the city so it's unlikely it'll be closed but it is possible |
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