Forum - View topicNEWS: Musicland to Ask for Financial Relief from Vendors
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RedComet
 Posts: 227 Location: Virginia |
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Crap my Suncoast is on their too. Even I buy from Suncoast occasionally but normally for movies and not anime.
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beelzebozo
 Posts: 308 Location: Aurora, Colorado |
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Part of me is glad because I'll enjoy less competition, but sad because I don't like to see legitimate stores go out of business. Looks like 4 stores in the Denver area.
A sidenote about the Media Play closings out here; apparently several of the anime-loving employees were telling people to go to the local bootlegger's shop for anime. And they wonder why they went out of business. 
Oh, and I may have some local anime related news soon. Is there any place I can directly submit links for screening? |
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hikaru004
 Posts: 2306 |
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Does this list of store closings also contain some Sam Goody stores? If so, is there a way of differentiating the Sam Goody from the Suncoast if both exist in the same mall?
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Gigastormz
Posts: 5 |
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Yes it includes Sam Goody stores. You will have to find out the store number at your local location and check the list to see if they are on it. First off, I used to work for Suncoast as an Assistant Manager. Secondly, to the person who posted the bankruptcy document with the Exhibit 1 of list of store closing: If you actually read the whole document, it indicates that the stores in Exhibit 1 ARE closing. I now work in the legal field and read mortgages and other such documents every day. Note that this isn't a final copy of the document. The blanks have to be filled in and it has not been signed or recorded with the County. So I guess it would be possible for them to change the list if they submitted a new Exhibit 1 but my guess is that they wouldn't change much at all if they were going to. Third, for all the people that currently work at Musicland and their store is on this list, I would start looking for a job right now. I also used to work for KB Toys who have since gone bankrupt and closed most of their stores. I quit KB to come work at Suncoast (Big mistake I might add). We probably had 10 or so stores in my state and only a few closed in the first round but our store ended up closing anyways. My store was the Mall of freakin America. You'd think that we'd be safe no matter what but nope, that doesn't matter. What mattered was the fact that KB Toy's Distribution Center and Headquarters is in New Jersey and they didn't want to spend the money to ship the items from there all the way over to the Midwest or West Coast areas. KB went on to close all of the stores to the West of the Mississippi River. If your store is far away from Minnesota (that's where Musicland's HQ is) then you are more likely to be closed. Yes, profitablity matters to some degree but if the first wave of store closings doesn't improve their debt, they will probably close more stores and what will matter is how far away from the DC they are. If I remember right Musicland switched DC's recently they used to have one in Illinois and now I think it's in Wisconsin. I could be wrong about the exact location but I know the DC is in the Midwest. Lastly, about Musicland going bankrupt in the first place, they had it coming for a long time. During my time there the DM and Managers almost cared nothing at all about sales in terms of dollars. All they cared about is if you get a reservation, special order, gift card or replay card. That way that would ensure that the customer would have to go back to the store to either pick up their DVD, use their gift card or use their Replay certificates/points. For example if we had a horrible day in sales dollars but we made our "loyalty" numbers our DM would be happy. If we had a great day in sales dollars but not in loyalty the DM would be somewhat happy about the sales but would care more about the fact we didn't have good loyalties and we'd get yelled at for it. This attitude is I think what ruins the company as a whole and especially ruins employee relations. All of my employees hated the DM and could care less about numbers but they didn't want to get fired so they had to try to get numbers cause it was their job. And if you didn't no matter how good a person you were with customers or sales you'd get fired eventually if you didn't get loyalties. The anime and manga industry are what has kept Musicland alive. Now that Best Buy and other retailers have gotten on the anime bandwagon more people have started buying there because you can get the same thing for $10 cheaper.
Competition is what makes lower prices. If you only had one place that sold something they could charge as much as they want cause it's the only place that has it and you'd have to go there. If you have several places they compete over the cheapest price or give you free stuff or whatever to get you to come to their store and not their competitors. |
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angieness
Posts: 162 Location: Columbus, OH |
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The list I posted also includes Sam Goody, you'd most likely have to call your Suncoasts and Sam Goodys to find out the store numbers. The Suncoast I work at as well as the Sam Goody downstairs from us are on the list. I'm hoping that since no other Suncoasts exist in the city that we will remain open. I really feel bad for a lot of my big anime customers, I have some people I'll talk to for like an hour and they often reserve 10 anime titles at a time. One customer alone spent $600 on anime and had about $300 in replay certificates a few days ago. So yeah I hope that we remain open, I know a lot of customers who get all their anime from us and pay for it all in replay certificates alone. That's one thing they wouldn't be able to do at Best Buy, I know before I started working at Suncoast my replay card helped me pay for a lot of anime.
I can easily see them killing off Sam Goody just because their CDs normally cost $20 and all their stuff can be bought cheaper at local CD stores as well as Best Buy. Suncoast however has a lot of things you can't get at Best Buy and Wal Mart. If you want new releases of big movies you can get them at Best Buy and Wal Mart. But if you want anime that's more than a year old, any foreign films, classic movies, etc. you can normally only get them at Suncoast. So the older people who often shop in our classics section are going to be screwed because they don't have access to the internet to order these movies |
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angieness
Posts: 162 Location: Columbus, OH |
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And sorry for the double post, the above person responded as I was typing my response. I fully intend on staying with my store until the bitter end. My DM said the stores listed were ones that were listed to be considered for leasing negotiations and if they can't change the leases the stores will be closed. I won't be looking for another job regardless because I'm in my last year of college out of state so I have nothing to lose. I'll remain with my store whether or not we go under
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Gigastormz
Posts: 5 |
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Good point I forgot to mention the leases on stores. I guess it depends on the malls but a lot of them around here were raising their prices on leases and that's also part of the reason all the KB Toys stores closing. What location is the store you work at angieness? |
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monkeybusiness
Posts: 4 |
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Musicland's failure is not because of the change in music purchasing, it is because of Executive greed, waste, ego, lack of experience...the Executive Wing of the company is riddled with rat bastards lining their pockets...Former CEO Eric Weisman is the number one abuser...what for him in the coming months...buying the only assest out of Bankruptcy...working both sides of the street has paid off for him...
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monkeybusiness
Posts: 4 |
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Only about 250 stores will remain open. All the rest are going to be closed. Then they'll look for a buyer for those stores. If no buyer, they'll convert to a chapter 7.
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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I'm actually surprised there weren't more on there from around here, especially the Burnsville Center store which always seems pretty dead and the fact the Mall of America isn't that far away and Southdale too and none of those are listed that I saw.
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Gigastormz
Posts: 5 |
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Me too. I thought Burnsville would go for sure but I didn't think Southdale would go because that is the DM's store. Her office is in that store so they wouldn't close that one. MOA is the most profitable store but I won't be surprised in the future if it closes. The leases there are being raised constantly. Ridgedale is like right down the block from the HQ in Minnetonka and they use that store to test new stuff in like signage and occasionally new products. I doubt they'd close that one. As far as any other store in Minnesota I wouldn't be surprised if they closed any but since the HQ is located in this state they'd probably close these ones last. |
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monkeybusiness
Posts: 4 |
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No, they are asking the bankruptcy court to let them close all of the unprofitable stores. Ask the court to keep the profitable ones open then a new buyer would be assigned the leases in those profitable locations. Or Musicland will try and keep the profitable stores for themselves and try and run them---this scenario is doubtful.
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Nabeshin
 Posts: 94 |
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Actually, they were quite profitable. Sick would be the word I would use... my district was in charge of it when it came to Chicago conventions, and they sold more then than over a month in the district combined. |
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Nabeshin
Posts: 94 |
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Sadly, every single word of this is true save for the anime and manga propping up the chain. Their highest cost-to-profit ratio items were the secondary merchandise - mugs, figures, shirts, collectibles, next to the mag subscriptions-- which brings me to another grating point: I was >< this close to being fired simply for not offering a grandmother the option of signing up for "8 free issues of Entertainment Weekly" (who turned out to be a secret shopper), had it not been for the fact I was already quitting in two weeks as is. As Gig said, all they cared about were the loyalty numbers overall. I had the highest sales, gift cards, Employee of the month (so often I actually stepped down to give someone else a chance), reservations, and best of all customer loyalty (the only satisfying thing of retail, when you have people that come in for you specifically to ask your opinion or will only buy from you)-- but in the end that didn't count for squat because I didn't pitch a bait-and-switch magazine subscription to a grandmother with two onery kids in tow. Frankly, they deserve what they got, because they didn't pay attention to the first thing in retail-- the customer. And they're always right. Especially when they walk out to get that "sale priced" movie @$26.99 over at BB or CC for $6-8 bucks less. |
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RedComet
Posts: 227 Location: Virginia |
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So do you think we'll hear anything of when these stores will close?
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