Requiem for Tower Records? I don’t think so.
The closing of Tower Records shows that a chain of cluttered, over-priced record stores staffed by arrogant clerks who hated to be bothered by customer interaction might have a little trouble making it in today’s world of increased choice. Yes, their catalog was deep at a time that other stores were carrying largely just the hits, but that advantage disappeared with the rise of the Internet which also had the benefit of not having to deal with the rudeness of the staff.
With the closing, all of the people who had stopped shopping there years ago are now coming out of the woodwork to talk about how the chain will be missed. No it won’t.
From the Times:
Tower store managers who were contacted Friday had not been informed of the liquidation sale. “Really?” said one staff member answering the phone at Tower’s flagship store on the Sunset Strip. “I had no idea.”
Funny, this is the same thing you would hear when you asked for an out-of-stock album that was being advertised on sale.
tags: tower records,
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October 8th, 2006 at 6:10 am
The bad thing is that instead of being punished for their lazy brutish stupidity the staff of Tower Records will just become baristas at independent coffee shops.
This will result in multiple homicides as people who haven’t yet had their daily caffiene fix will be in no mood to have some rude, pierced, tattooed buttmunch ignore them for 20 minutes then act like they are doing the world a service by actually doing their job and making an espresso.
After two or three of these caffiene deprivation induced slayings a cool factor will begin to develop around them infecting teenagers and superimpressionable adults leading to a general drop in IQ and the very fabric of America will be ripped asunder.
Civil War will ensue which will eventually of course be won by the forces of righteousness, but during the time we are distracted China will begin to push for global hegemony.
As America tries to hold back the communist hordes the world will be pushed towards Nuclear War. Eventually missiles will fly and Nuclear Winter will occur. Crops will die and the human race wil strave to death.
The determined will hold out for a while by eating the decaying corpses of thier friends and family, but eventually they too will succumb, and the human race will be extinct.
After all this a million years from now when cockroaches rule the earth they will discover the ruins of America and wonder “Why did they die out”.
All because Tower Records closed.
OK I admit that is probably a worst case scenario but it could happen.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Where will the black-dyed hair-kids with Lit. degrees who listen to college radio work now? There is only room for so-many more Starbucks per block.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Haha this is funny. And true, about the Starbucks thing. I’m so tired of being able to stand outside of one, look across the street and see another one. Their coffee isn’t even all that good.
October 14th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
please allow me to pass on some tales of mind-boggling Tower Records stupidity which were passed on to me today by a former Tower employee. I’m talking stupidity which makes Bush look like a goddamned Rhodes Scholar:
1) My friend worked at the Mesa, Arizona Tower store. There is a very large community college a half-mile away. Tower did not do any advertising in the school newspaper. Really. No student discounts either.
2) Tower also had a primo location at Arizona State, right next to the campus. It was there forever, I was buying records there since I was 12. Early in the 90s ASU bought the shopping center for future expansion. All leases went month-to-month at that point. Though Tower stuck around for a few years longer, at any time they could have been given the heave-ho with 30 days’ notice. Do you think they looked for a new location? That would be a big fat NO.
3) Tower was given first dibs on a primo location in the basement of the Memorial Union (student union) at ASU. They said no. It was too small, they said. There is an independent record store there now and I guarantee you they are making money.
4) Tower couldn’t cope with Best Buy. When BB opened across the street from their Mesa location, sales of the top 10 CDs cratered since Tower was trying to sell for $18 each while BB was selling for a loss at $10 to $11 each. Tower would match their prices for a month, then raise the prices the next month and sales would crater again.
5) Shitty pay. Shitty employees. My friend told me that Tower was where you worked if you couldn’t hold a retail job anywhere else.
There were many more stories like this, and I could only wonder how they hung on for so long. Wherehouse bit the dust before Tower did. Tower had everything going for it… a very deep selection, yes. A generation or two that liked shopping there. But Tower was run into the ground by boatloads of stupidity combined with an inability to adjust or change with the market. They just thought people would keep shopping there because they were Tower, dammit.