Megastore is rex Tower plans the largest record store in Montreal as the Sam chain scales back and indies sit tight by CHRIS YURKIW
The retail sector of the music industry has been going through a resultant shakedown since 1994, manifest most recently in Canada by the announcement that national giant Sam the Record Man was looking to scale back operations since its market share had dropped from a mid-'80s high of 25 per cent to a current 7-to-8 per cent. Now the bad news: 1996 saw music sales reach a plateau, tightening the screws even further. "If you have a little smaller pie, then it's divvied up that much more," says Bill MacEwen, co-general manager of Sam's downtown Montreal store. And while MacEwen says that he foresees no changes to his flagship Montreal store, the chain's second-largest after Sam's Toronto superstore on Yonge Street, he's got another reason to worry. The California-based chain Tower Records is planning to move into Montreal and is negotiating a lease that will bring another international megastore downtown, along with HMV. Tower's only other Canadian store opened in 1995 on Toronto's music-heavy Yonge Street strip, a modest superstore at 22,500 square feet. The Montreal locales that Tower is looking at are 35-40,000 square feet, and that's not just because rent is cheaper here. "We just feel that there's no point going in there being smaller than HMV," says Vince Parr, Tower's director of marketing in Canada. "It's got to be the same or bigger." Further east along Ste-Catherine, Archambault's main store has been getting bigger too. Over the past two years, extensive renovation and expansion has seen the 101-year-old store convert its music-book section into a full bookstore, beef up its video department and almost double its space for all kinds of recorded music. The store now stands at 50,000 square feet with more new departments to be added, and it's billing itself as "the largest music and bookstore in Quebec." Manager Josée St-Vincent says all of that gives Archambault its own megastore and make it ready to take on all international comers. "The concept of Archambault is to be a kind of cultural supermarket, to give people a place where they can find anything from books to music to instruments. So that if they want to, customers could spend several hours in the store." Department stores pioneered that notion over a century ago, but those kinds of outlets are hurting amid the shifting retail landscape. "As department stores are closing downtown, record and book superstores seem to be finding a place," says Will Straw, professor of communications at McGill University and music industry watchdog. "It's part of every city turning itself into a cultural theme park downtown, with festivals and so on. This is the fastest growing industry, and the only way in which cities seem to be able to revitalize their downtowns--through culture. And superstores add to that." Straw feels the HMV superstore on Ste-Catherine would be most affected by the arrival of Tower, but Sam's MacEwen thinks it might be the smallest players. Parr says that Tower is indeed coming to Montreal, but that if they signed a lease today, "You probably wouldn't see a store before spring." |
Despite large growth in music sales during the first half of 1990s, fuelled by the CD boom, music stores' share of purchases has been dropping in North America since 1990. Discount stores, audio equipment outlets, suburban warehouses, bookstores and video stores are all adding recorded music to their stock in an attempt to become convenient one-stop shopping destinations, while mail-order, Internet purchase and record clubs grow.