Last Shop Standing by Graham Jones

Author:Graham Jones [Jones, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-417-3
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2010-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

During that month I was inundated with shops calling to tell me about the Morrisons promotion. One dealer informed me of how he was beating the system. It had become clear to him that some Morrisons outlets were not bothered how many CDs were purchased, so he would turn up on a Friday evening to find out how many copies they had in stock of the CDs he was interested in purchasing. If the quantity was small, he would buy the lot. This ensured that Morrisons would have no chance to re-stock and that, for the busy weekend period, it would be sold out of some of its top titles. Therefore, the only way people could buy those titles during that weekend would be to visit his shop.

It is good to see one customer fighting back – but how long can it last? When you mention this tale to the general public they just cannot believe the madness that is the UK record industry.

Dave Gibbs, the chain’s owner, has a fascinating background, as he has seen record shops from the other side – previously he had been a sales rep for Impulse. The roll of Impulse was to hype records. They employed a team of sales reps who drove around the country with cars full of CDs and singles to simply give away to chart-return shops. The Zomba Group owned the company, now famous for artists such as Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Dave’s salary was mainly commission, which he received for obtaining top 20 hits for the titles he was promoting. To earn money, therefore, he needed to encourage shops to enter numbers in the chart-return machine by fair means or foul. He was allowed a fair amount of freedom and could offer up to ten full-price CDs a week to each shop in return for numbers entered into the machine. One shop in Rotherham called K&D was known amongst the sales reps of the time as ‘Hypers Delight’, as in return for free stock they allowed the reps to type in as many numbers as they liked.

Dave remembers fondly the day, after two years of giving away free stock, he was given a new release that had to ‘sell’ to shops – it was Kylie Minogue’s new album.

In 1997 Impulse were merged with Pinnacle distribution and Dave was made redundant. He was approached by one of his customers, Mike Eden, who had two record stores trading as Pendulum in Melton Mowbray and Market Harborough. Mike was keen to expand and suggested to Dave that they go into partnership together, as he had noticed that Retford was a town in need of a record shop. They opened Retford in 1997 and two years later the boys opened a fourth store in Stamford. In 2005 Mike retired from the business and Dave purchased his share in Pendulum.

Dave’s favourite customer is the man known as ‘Trolley Man’. In all the years he has been coming into the shop, Dave has never seen him wearing anything else other than his beloved Eddie Stobart T-shirt.

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