Tower Records closes its doors for good

Over the past two weeks, sales at Tower Records have exploded. Hundreds of customers have poured into the Willow Lawn store every day, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars that rival Christmas season profits. Strangely enough, Tower Records is bankrupt and will not receive a single dime.

On Oct. 6, the financial company Great American Group bought out struggling Tower in an auction for $134.3 million. Now, Richmond’s record store joins its 88 sister locations across the country in a “going out of business” sale with 20 to 40 percent off all items in stock. Great American, whose Web site says it is “rejuvenating the bottom line,” will liquidate the assets of the 46-year-old Tower Records chain by the end of 2006.

Tower has said competition from free music downloads and cheap music stores like Wal-Mart brought it to bankruptcy.

Tower employee and VCU student David Abbruscato agreed, saying “Best Buy and Plan 9 are cheaper.”

Tower’s prices have continued to drop, however, during the sale. Storewide markdowns at the Willow Lawn location began Oct. 7 at 10 to 20 percent but have since increased over the sale’s two-week history.

“Every week it’s gone up,” said Abbruscato of the discounts.

All music CDs, DVDs and posters are currently 20 percent off normal Tower prices. Belts, hats and video games are 25 percent off; books and magazines are 40 percent off. Due to the high sales, though, books are nearly all gone, Abbruscato said. Mp3 players and game consoles have completely sold out.

Despite the lower prices, Abbruscato said they are still somewhat high.

“People are buying more stuff than the discounts save them and are surprised when prices are so much,” he said. “I mean, 20 percent isn’t really that much.”

The discounts should continue to rise until the end of the sale in mid-December, Abbruscato said.

“When Tower Books closed three years ago, everything was 80 percent off by the time it closed,” Abbruscato said. Still, Great American makes all decisions about prices now, Abbruscato said, so they are hard to predict.

In February 2004, Tower filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, saying the competition of free music downloads and cheaper stores like Wal-Mart hurt them the most. From Oct. 5 to 6 of this year, Tower Records was put up for auction. After nearly 30 hours of bidding, Great American Group won, narrowly defeating Trans World Entertainment by $500,000.

Trans World planned to keep at least some of the stores open, had they won.

Other Great American Group liquidations that are currently ongoing include Jo-Ann Fabrics, Hancock Fabrics, Copeland Sports and Bay Furniture.

Tower employees are now paid by Great American and will be kept on staff until the store closes in December. In the end, all of Tower’s approximately 3,000 employees will be fired.

“I’ve thought about just walking out,” Abbruscato said. “None of the employees here care at all now.”

“They also took away our employee discount. That’s pretty much why everyone worked here in the first place,” said junior jazz performance major and Tower employee Ron Fix about the company that will eventually terminate his job.

He said that was not the only reason for lamenting Tower’s disappearance.

“It was just the best music store in town,” Fix said. “Also, if you want to find jazz or classical you’ve got to go hunting through Barnes and Noble or Borders. Here, you could actually find a good mixture of everything, a good variety.

“Plan 9’s probably second best,” Fix said.

Employees at Plan 9’s Cary Street record store, the original location for the locally created record store chain, found Tower’s closure to be partly good news.

“I feel bad for them and their families,” said McKinsey Moore, an employee at Plan 9, one of Tower’s former rivals. “It sucks to lose your job like that. But our sales will increase.

“The people that shop at Tower usually want stuff you can’t find at Circuit City and Best Buy,” Moore explained. “They’re able to special order, and that’s what we do, too. If they can’t go to Tower, they’ll probably end up shopping here.”

Moore said Plan 9 seems to be doing well. It bought out the Record Exchange chain several months ago, opening five new Plan 9 locations, including Lynchburg and Roanoke, as well as in Winston-Salem, Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C. While Plan 9’s expansion to 12 stores could be seen to parallel Tower’s expansion to 200 stores in the late 1990s – just before its financial demise – Moore feels Plan 9 is different.

“We’ve got used CDs and vinyl,” Moore explained as Plan 9’s financial advantage.

Richmond resident and loyal Tower shopper Buddy Parsons said he sometimes goes to Plan 9 but only for the used CDs.

“The only thing I don’t like about Tower is there is no used section,” Parsons said.

Parsons said he has shopped at Tower since its opening over a decade ago, averaging a trip every other week. He especially likes the musical performance DVDs, having bought Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth ones. He has taken adnvatage of the “going out of business” sale four times already to buy magazines and posters.

“I’m waiting until the last minute for the CDs and DVDs,” Parsons said. “I’m going to come pick what’s left over.”

One store clerk recommended that other shoppers do the same, at least for lesser-known items that will not sell out quickly.

Abbruscato said that whatever does not sell by the time the Tower stores close will be sold on eBay.