Virgin no more...

willie_fugalwillie_fugal 1,862 Posts
edited March 2009 in Strut Central
http://www.thewrap.com/article/1648
By Lauren HorwitchVirgin Megastores??? five remaining retail stores will close by this summer, individuals inside the company told TheWrap on Monday, signaling the end to a once-dominant consumer retail behemoth. Virgin Entertainment Group CEO Simon Wright confirmed the news to TheWrap by the afternoon. "It's sad news, but it has nothing to do with the stores. In this economy, we can't justify the other stores to replace the Times Square store."The Times Square store made the bulk of Virgin's profit, and VEG decided to close that flagship in April, they recently announced.As a leading music retailer, Virgin has been in decline for severl years. In August 2007 two real estate companies bought the company from Richard Branson's Virgin Entertainment Group North America.The rent for the Times Square store is $54/sq foot, while market prices put prime space in that area at closer to $700/sq foot.Music retailers across the country have been fighting a losing battle with Internet sales. Tower Records declared bankruptcy last year.Wright said the company had been profitable and was not struggling, but that the new owners were interested in the real estate rather than the retail business.Wright announced the mass closures to employees at Virgin???s corporate offices in Los Angeles late Friday, employees told TheWrap. Roughly 100 corporate employees will be laid off and hundreds of Megastore retail workers will be out of a job by the summer.It was previously announced that VEG???s flagship store in Times Square ??? the highest volume music store in the United States ??? will shut down in April, followed by Megastores in New York???s Union Square and San Francisco.Dates have not been set for the closure of the remaining Megastores in Hollywood, Denver, and Orlando.A company spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.Vigin Megastores have been collapsing one by one since VEG was acquired by two real-estate companies -- the Related Cos. and Vornado Realty Trust -- in August 2007.The chain, once a looming presence on the American pop culture scene, boasted 11 stores when it was acquired but now operates only six.Virgin Megastore's founder Richard Branson opened his first record shop on London's Oxford Street in the early 1970s. Branson, who sold the Virgin Megastores in 2007, now owns around 200 companies in over 30 countries.Industry experts have said the real-estate companies bought the stores for their property value. The Times Square store sits on approximately 60,000 square feet of selling space. The space will be converted into a Forever 21 store.
THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FOREVER 21.

  Comments


  • UnherdUnherd 1,880 Posts
    Wow, no more big music shops in NYC. I prefer going to independent stores, but I didn't mind having a real giant spot right there in Union Sq, and that place always seemed busy.

    End of an era, for better or worse....

  • skelskel You can't cheat karma 5,033 Posts
    Thought this was going to be about Orange Yoghurt.

    Anyways, Virgin sucked for many years.

    In fact, back in post-punk time, the Virgin store in Tottenham Court Road killed it with the big basement 'alternative' shop. You could get all manner of anarchist punk vinyl, fanzines and other paraphenalia there. Many a sunny Saturday afternoon was fruitfully spent there, and many pieces of my extensive Crass, Discharge and Zounds collection still bear the hallmark of the horridly gummy Virgin Megastore sticker, helpfully bearing date that they hit the shelves.

    Here in UK they got renamed Zavvi, and munched royally on donkey balls.

    Branson is undoubtedly good at business. Anyone who buys a business from him should beware.

  • SelinaKyle83SelinaKyle83 1,042 Posts
    Thought this was going to be about Orange Yoghurt.

  • Lucious_FoxLucious_Fox 2,479 Posts
    This is old news.

    Im gonna keep my eye out on The Mass Clearence CD/etc Sales like Tower did when they folded.

    I'll be coppin CD's of artists I dont care about for 1 dollar.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    The old Virgin stores which Zavvi took over have all closed over here now. Even the once mighty TCR Megastore, where I bought my copy of Blue Train as a 20-y-o, now lies empty and shuttered. Retail be hurtin'.

  • Jonny_PaycheckJonny_Paycheck 17,825 Posts
    It seems amazing to me that a realty magnate would purchase a chain of retail stores in order to shutter them and re-rent the property at exponentially higher rates. We surely live in an interesting time.

    I have no real love for Virgin Megastores (although it was always convenient to pop in for a CD or DVD on the way home at the Union Square location) but this is kind of depressing. Not that they're closing, but the how/why of it.

    Eh.

  • erewhonerewhon 1,123 Posts


    Virgin sucked for many years.


    ha ha.

  • The_Hook_UpThe_Hook_Up 8,182 Posts
    I was always amazed how stores of those size, with as many employees as they had even could turn a profit selling products with as little mark up as CDs and DVDs...It is hard enough for small shop with one or two employees...it always amazes me to look at an invoice and see the suggested retail on a CD be $14.98, and then peep the wholesale cost which is something like 12.48...how the F*ck do you keep a 10,000 sq ft space with 20+ employees open selling that product at that price? I guess you dont....once again the record companies shooting everybody in the foot because they shot themselves in the foot with their grossly inflated product...

  • buttonbutton 1,475 Posts
    Thought this was going to be about Orange Yoghurt.

    yeah what a let down

  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    This is old news.

    I'm sayin'. I know Virgin didn't shut down all their stores simultaneously, but I feel like I already been through it when the one where I live shut down two years ago. But it's still a sad thing.

    I don't care what anybody sez, I'll always defend Tower and Virgin[/b] for being chain stores that stocked the esoteric and the obscure, along with the usual chartbusters. Now all we got left is Borders, and their CD selection is GRIM.

  • Lucious_FoxLucious_Fox 2,479 Posts
    I don't care what anybody sez, I'll always defend Tower and Reckless for being chain stores that stocked the esoteric and the obscure, along with the usual chartbusters. Now all we got left is Borders, and their CD selection is GRIM.

    No doubt.

    I think Tower has like 4 or 5 spots overall since they were around.

    There was one on 73rd street where the Supermarket is now. That shut down in the early 90's and they open that great one on 66th. The Jazz section was sick.

    HMV had a very very good run for a minute.

    I remember when The Wiz stocked Prism 12"s.

    J&R Music World still has a great DVD & CD collectron.

  • verb606verb606 2,518 Posts
    This is old news.

    I'm sayin'. I know Virgin didn't shut down all their stores simultaneously, but I feel like I already been through it when the one where I live shut down two years ago. But it's still a sad thing.

    I don't care what anybody sez, I'll always defend Tower and Reckless for being chain stores that stocked the esoteric and the obscure, along with the usual chartbusters. Now all we got left is Borders, and their CD selection is GRIM.

    Wait, what happened to Reckless? Why are you speaking about them in the past tense?

  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    This is old news.

    I'm sayin'. I know Virgin didn't shut down all their stores simultaneously, but I feel like I already been through it when the one where I live shut down two years ago. But it's still a sad thing.

    I don't care what anybody sez, I'll always defend Tower and Reckless for being chain stores that stocked the esoteric and the obscure, along with the usual chartbusters. Now all we got left is Borders, and their CD selection is GRIM.

    Wait, what happened to Reckless? Why are you speaking about them in the past tense?

    My mistake! I meant Tower and Virgin[/b]. Let me go back and re-edit that...

  • skelskel You can't cheat karma 5,033 Posts
    I don't care what anybody sez, I'll always defend Tower and Reckless

    HMV had a very very good run for a minute.


    Tower in Piccadilly Circus (London) was top drawer. Three floors of goodness, open til midnight back in a time when the town shops closed at 6pm.

    I've always despised the Reckless experience in Soho. Run by elitist snobs with poker faces for whom talking to a customer was a social faux pas on par with farting in front of the vicar or (not quite so bad, this) sodomising his wife.

    HMV in Oxford Street is the only big store game in town now.

    Sad to report that French tourists ask for directions to "aashe, muh, vuh"

  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    I don't care what anybody sez, I'll always defend Tower and Reckless

    HMV had a very very good run for a minute.


    Tower in Piccadilly Circus (London) was top drawer. Three floors of goodness, open til midnight back in a time when the town shops closed at 6pm.

    I've always despised the Reckless experience in Soho.

    My reference to Reckless was a mistake. I meant to talk about the big corporate monoliths and free-associated to Reckless because at this point, their three locations in Chicago are the biggest (but not the only) used-record game in town, due to everybody else either closing up (Hi-Fi) or just falling off (Second Hand Tunes).


  • Im gonna keep my eye out on The Mass Clearence CD/etc Sales like Tower did when they folded.

    I'll be coppin CD's of artists I dont care about for 1 dollar.
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