Sam Goody

Infobox_Company
company_name = Sam Goody
company_
company_type = Electronics
foundation = 1956
location = Minneapolis, Minnesota
industry = Retail
products = DVDs, CDs, Videos, Video Games, Posters
homepage = [http://www.samgoody.com/ SamGoody.com]

Sam Goody is a music and entertainment retailer in the United States and formerly in the United Kingdom. It is owned and operated by Musicland, which itself is owned by former rival Trans World Entertainment which also runs Suncoast Motion Picture Company and, until January 2006, Media Play. It specializes in music sales, and has historically been one of the major players in the music industry. The Musicland Group was once the largest music retailer in the country, operating at its peak more than 1300 stores — over 800 of them Sam Goodys — and earning over $2 billion in annual revenue.

History

The Sam Goody name was first applied to a chain of record stores, the first of which opened in 1951, which were established by Samuel Gutowitz (1904-1991) of New York City, and later acquired by rival Musicland based in Minneapolis. Sam Goody continued to grow through both acquisitions and organic growth, including the launch of its website.

Best Buy

Trouble struck after a botched attempt by Best Buy to diversify its retail holdings and a major downturn in the music industry due to internet downloads and competition from big-box retailers. Best Buy's attempt to transform Musicland into a youth-oriented small-format technology hub failed after two years of ownership. Just weeks before Best Buy was prepared to liquidate the entire chain of stores (and after closing several hundred), they found a buyer in Sun Capital Partners, a private equity firm out of Boca Raton, Florida.

Musicland bankruptcy

Under Sun Capital, the company closed more stores and tried to get the business back to basics, but ultimately the challenges of competition and internet downloading proved too much and in January 2006, The Musicland Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. In February 2006, the company announced the closing [http://www.musicland.com/mediainfo.asp] of 226 Sam Goody and 115 Suncoast Motion Picture Company stores. Following the closings, the Sam Goody chain was left with 191 stores.

Acquisition by Transworld

In March 2006, Trans World Entertainment, which had been acquiring their competitors for several years, announced the purchase 400 Sam Goody and Suncoast stores. Trans World kept 345 of the stores open around the country and closed 55. In the fall of 2006, Trans World Entertainment Corp. began changing the names of mall-based Sam Goody stores to FYE, the company's signature retail store. Trans World retained the Suncoast Motion Picture Co. name on about 170 stores. [http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2006/02/20/daily6.html]

After a dismal fourth quarter 2006 and a lackluster year in general, Transworld admitted that it failed to anticipate some of the challenges that remained associated with the remaining Musicland stores that it acquired, especially the "Sam Goody Rural" concept located in small communities. As a result, they announced more store closings, many of which will likely be former Musicland stores.

Trans World will focus on the f.y.e. brand and convert all Sam Goody stores to f.y.e stores in the future.

As of February 2008, Trans World removed the Sam Goody brand from its corporate website.

am Goody in the United Kingdom

In the 1990s "Sam Goody" entered the UK market and established a presence in a number of English towns, such as Weston-super-Mare and Stockport, with a "deep catalogue" retail format that included a large amount of "recurrent" music albums and videos. However whereas this format might have been successful in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s, in the United Kingdom it came under pressure from a range of price led and established retailers. By the start of the 2000s Sam Goody had exited from UK marketplace selling its stores off to rival retailers.

tockport

The Stockport store was launched to much "" in a new retail development at the end of the Mersey Way shopping centre over two floors and mezzanine, with a special listening post area with a view of the entire mall.

However Sam Goody misjudged the marketplace and opened its store directly across the way from the slightly cheaper Our Price store, as well as nearby the successful Stockport value retailer Music Zone (Trade Direct) and HMV. Even though the store featured a larger amount of stock than its rivals and more obscure records, this was not enough to tempt the shoppers of Stockport away from the English companies, who preferred to shop around for the best deal. The store closed and the unit is now taken by a building society.

Weston-super-Mare

After Sam Goody had decided to exit the tough English market, the Weston-super-Mare store was sold to American rival Tower Records who rebranded it as Tower Express before they too decided to quit the UK market.

External links

* [http://www.samgoody.com/ Official website]
* [http://www.competition-commission.org.uk/rep_pub/reports/1994/fulltext/356c6.pdf Sam Goody in the UK]