message from mike
newbury comics co-founder
Newbury Comics-No Future?!
Our Company is approaching a long awaited crossroads. Behind us is our storied past of bringing cutting edge music to a highly enthusiastic, and very loyal customer base.
When John and I opened our then tiny store front on Newbury Street in 1978, we had no idea the ride we were in for! Over the ensuing years, we built stores all across the region, worked with hundreds of the most interesting and creative people you could imagine, and in the process impacted the cultural perspective of New England.
We have sold over 90 million records, CDs and DVDs, had hundreds of artist in-store appearances and employed perhaps 2400 different people through the years.
We have out lived, out witted and out lasted The Coop, Strawberries, Lechmere, NE Music City, Tower Records, HMV, Popcorn, Good Vibrations, Virgin Megastore, Circuit City and now sadly, Borders. We are left competing at Brick and Mortar with the likes of Wal-Mart and Target, and what remains of Best Buy’s and FYE’s media offerings.
Looking forward, we can see we surely must morph, or slowly die. There simply isn’t enough remaining customer demand to support more than a handful of our stores in a few years if we don’t change our mixture of goods.
Many of you have continued to support us, even as your own music consumption has shifted to online options. All of you have noticed our not so subtle shift in emphasis from pure music, to music and DVD, to now at times an odd mixture of new and used CDs + DVDs, combined with an increasing amount of pop culture and fashion items.
We recently launched a new “hybrid” store in the South Shore Plaza in Braintree, moving our store from across the street. Yeah, I know, malls kinda suck sometimes. This store features way more fashion than we have ever presented. The results are very encouraging so far, with CD + DVD sales up, along with a very strong increase in other non media categories.
We have also built our web efforts to the point where they represent 25% of our total sales, mainly through eBay, Amazon, and Punk.com. These web sales help support our overall cost structure, and may be a potential future path for the entire company.
We are right now in the process of building another hybrid superstore in the Natick Mall. The next 6 months will be critical in determining whether we have a brick and mortar store concept which will survive the steady decline in CD + DVD sales we are now experiencing in all of our other locations.
I know we can’t turn back the clock, and I know we have to change dramatically over the next 3 years. The question is – What to do?! I always say the 3 most important words in business are “I don’t know!” Here’s to hoping we can figure it out.
I would very much appreciate it if you could provide us with some feedback on our future.
Please fill out the survey below and send any additional thoughts you might have to me directly to [email protected]. Thanks so much for both your honest feedback and your support over all these years!
mike dreese
ceo and co-founder
Customer Survey
|
