Tower Records To Be Liquidated starting 10/7

[vansmack]

I thought this could use it's own thread....
 
 Tower Records To Be Liquidated
 By Ed Christman, N.Y.
 
 Tower Records, the music industry's most famous retail brand, will be liquidated beginning tomorrow (Oct. 7).
 
 After a 30-hour auction, the process was won by the lead-bidder, Great American, who put together a consortium of other suitors who were bidding on different components of the retailer. The winning bid was $134.3 million.
 
 �??It's a sad day for the music business and I feel badly for all Tower employees," says Jim Urie, president of Universal Music Group Distribution. "Tower was probably the greatest brand that will ever exist in music retail.�?�
 
 In court Michael Bloom, a partner with Philadelphia law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, the law firm that represents the secured trace creditors committee, questioned if the winning bid was the best one. Bloom pointed out that one of Trans World's partners, Hilco Merchant Resources, LLC., upped its bid by $500,000�??after the auction closed�??thus matching Great American's bid. Bloom claimed the Trans World bid was more beneficial for the 2700 Tower employees and all the trade creditors.
 
 But U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Brendan L. Shannon ruled in favor of the Great American bid, noting it was important to vindicate the Chapter 11 auction process.
 
 There is a chance Tower Records could live on via Tower.com. Norton LLC, part of the Great American consortium, put up $3.8 million to acquire Tower.com and Pulse Magazine.
 
 Out-of-business sales at Tower's stores will begin tomorrow.

[vansmack]

Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
  any word on what discount they'll be starting at?

No word yet.  They just made the annoucement about an hour ago.

[vansmack]

I happen to work down the street from a Tower Records.  So I walked in and asked them about the big liquidation sale tomorrow.
 
 Turns out the manager hadn't told the staff yet.  So, suffice it to say, that was a little awkward.

[kosmo vinyl]

Well until it about 40% off it's not worth looking unless they have stacks of choice boxsets.  When the Annapolis store closed I held off a week or so and still ended up with a stack o' bargins. Those tasty import compliations on the cheap made it worth the trip...

[you be betty]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  I happen to work down the street from a Tower Records.  So I walked in and asked them about the big liquidation sale tomorrow.
 
 Turns out the manager hadn't told the staff yet.  So, suffice it to say, that was a little awkward.

ahahahaha!
 
 "So, how are the employees taking this whole liquidation th...em...oh."

[Random Citizen]

The liquidation discounts will begin at:
 Magazines = 30% off
 Books = 20% off
 Everything else = 10% off
 
 I haven't shopped at a Tower in ages. However, I've purchased vinyl through their online presence a few times. Their prices weren't that great.

[saintangelsin]

Originally posted by Random Citizen PDX:
  The liquidation discounts will begin at:
 Magazines = 30% off
 Books = 20% off
 Everything else = 10% off
 

Looks like next weekend might be a good time to go shopping, eh? It's weird my dad and I were talking about going record shopping. Maybe next weekend, I'll go to the store in rockville and buy a crap load of stuff.
 
 ps- is there any good places in DC to go album shopping? i've been meaning to ask this. I'm dying to buy some music.

[Frank Gallagher]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  .
 
  "Tower was probably the greatest brand that will ever exist in music retail.�?�
 
 

What!!!!  :eek:  If it was any good it wouldn't have gone belly-up.
 
 It was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind both Virgin and HMV.

[Herr Professor Doktor Doom]

So does this liquidation sale mean that Tower will start reasonably pricing its CDs for the first time in its existence?
 
 Also... that's horrible that the employees didn't know yet.  What an asshole way to manage people.

[Dr. Anton Phibes]

Where's that person who argued with me that this was never gonna happen??.....the doctor is ALWAYS right! Let the liquidation sale begin!

[bellenseb]

Tower Records was a huge icon and destination for me growing up, but lost its usefulness over time.
 
 Despite high prices, Tower was supposedly the place to go for deep catalog. Yet in the past few years when I bothered to go, they rarely had any catalog I was looking for. I was on a 60s/70s songwriter kick, and when I went looking for Ochs, Nico, Hardin, Wainwright, et al the Tower downtown rarely had more than 1 disc for any of these guys despite each having lots (in many cases 10+) of in-print albums. They also used to have lots of imports. When I went looking for the Japanese Matthew Sweet impoert a few years ago, no dice...eventually you just stop bothering. Why NOT order online or have the fine folks at Melody or Olssons get it for you in 3 days?
 
 I also had no more need for expensive $12 import singles with one bonus track, the sort of thing I used to spend plenty of money on there. While I still always buy albums, I could no longer justify $12 for one bonus track and dl'ed that sort of thing.
 
 Couple that with very high prices and no used CDs, and what good was Tower? They DID have an excellent zine/magazine selection, where else can you regularly find Found magazine around town? But other than that, they seemed to be stubbornly sticking to their outdated model without any effort to update or be a competitive, appealing place to shop...

[kosmo vinyl]

Has anyone swung by the DC Tower, on another forum they were reported as doing business as usual on Sat.... Maybe it was one of the few places that was sold separately. It could be that it actually made money given it's location and the little competition in the DC area.
 
 It seemed to me that Tower could have been more intelligent in what they stocked.  As Bellenseb points they carried a lot of tres expensive imports, it always amazed me to see that entire aisle of imported dance, trance, club, etc music in stock at the Rockville store.  How many people buy that stuff on a whim.
 
 They could also have easily created a Classical/Jazz speciality store in DC vs having the inventory carried in triplicate.  I would guess buyers of that type of music would be more likely to buy at a retail outlet.

[edbert]

I passed through the DC Tower on Sat and didn't see any sales.  In fact, that rack with the current top 20 albums looked different to me... I thought it usually said "top 20 always on sale" and it didn't this time... so I picked up one of the CDs and the sticker on the back said $16.99.  Maybe they're nixing the regular discounts in prep for the storewide discounts
 

Maybe it was one of the few places that was sold separately.

Sold? I think it's space leased from the company that owns 200 Penn

When will it affect the online tower records?
 
 http://www.towerrecords.com

[kosmo vinyl]

On some other site it was mentioned that some of the tower assets where sold in a seperate transaction...