onenorthernsoul wrote:
ps always fancied seeing Wagner's 'The Ring Cycle' on stage.
You'll need a week off if it's the whole thing
Blimey, why did you leave the business then, Rigger?
It left me, really.
Over the years I worked for Our Price, Tower Records, the independent (called
Essential Music) and Fopp.
None of them are around anymore and I got made redundant from both Tower and Fopp, the latter being particularly badly handled by the company - they told us at 5.30pm on payday via an email. Every single employee in every single branch (and head office) had worked that month and then didn't get paid for it. Shameful. Some managers took money from the safe/takings to pay their staff but I didn't want to do that as it felt just as dishonest as what they did and the staff agreed with me, weirdly. We all got back something like 30-50% of what we were owed eventually but it took a couple of years for most of us.
Essential was the best as I ran it like my own business.
We had branches in Greenwich - insanely busy store in tiny premises with the CDs displayed spine on as there was no room to put them face on) - and Brighton, Bournemouth and Southampton. Mine was 3rd when I took over. Within a year, I'd mate it #1 and it stayed there. I introduced DVDs and specialised in imports, offering a great customer order service and - most importantly - I stocked the best sellers in bulk. The owner of the company would only ever order one of anything, so if someone came in on a Saturday morning and bought, say, Led Zep IV or Dark Side Of The Moon, you couldn't sell another copy till Tuesday after re-ordering on Monday morning. Given we sold most back cat titles at £6 that was pretty stupid. I'd have a copy in the rack, another on the wall and maybe one in the window, plus five behind the counter, ready to sell. I did this for all the obvious classic albums - hundreds of titles with four or five copies of each - and then we'd play them during lunchtimes and on the weekend. It's just really basic retailing but he was so principled and "knew" his way was the right way, he refused to change almost to spite me, it was ridiculous. We got on, but there was a bit of a clash of egos.
I won in the end in terms of sales anyway ..
Funnily enough, the other owner - who lived in Spain due to ill health and only came over once a month to do the books - called me about three years after I left and asked if I wanted to set something up with him. The business had closed by then, like most record stores, and I was worried I'd put my money into a failing industry so I said no, let's leave it a while.
I have been thinking about it lately but I'm still not sure. Maybe a second-hand vinyl store with selected new stock, but I still don't know ..
How about this for a track - Roy Harper's 'When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease'? Love it. Pink Floyd connection there too.
