There was a grand opening Friday morning in Crawley. After a gap of nearly five years, HMV was returning to Crawley. The old Crawley store was closed in the second round of closures and restructures when the company were struggling; and it is now Dunhelm less than one hundred yards away from where the new store is.
HMV had been hit hard by the supermarket chains (especially Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s) going big on having lots of vinyl, CDs, games, and DVDs in their stores at cheap prices. Which along with the ever increasing empire of Amazon was making it difficult for them to survive.
It was a shame for Crawley as HMV was the only proper record shop in the town. And what do you know, no sooner had it disappeared from our streets then the supermarkets announced they were scaling back their music selections, and in the case of Sainsbury’s stopping them completely. So, after forcing HMV out of the local market they withdrew and left us with nowhere locally to get new music. And with that it was either travel long distances or use Amazon, neither being great options.
In addition, HMV’s flagship site on Oxford Street went as well. I was shocked to see that building just a couple of weeks ago when we were up in London. The shop has been taken over by American Candy Store, and the famous sigh on the front of the building now reads “His Master’s American Candy Store”.
HMV hasn’t always been the greatest chain, or the cheapest to buy from, but I’ve been buying records (tapes, CD’s, videos, DVDs etc.) from them for nearly forty years.
There were a couple of stores in Leicester where I grew up. One in the Haymarket centre which sold everything, but I would use the smaller store opposite the market as it specialised in the burgeoning House and Hip-Hop scenes in the late eighties.
I spent vast amounts in the Manchester store when I lived there and was restarting my collection. I have a mass of limited edition, signed, etched, coloured vinyl, and poster pack seven inch singles that were releases by rock and indie bands in the early noughties.
When I moved to Crawley in 2006, these releases were dying out, but I still got nearly every new seven inch that was available there. As vinyl pretty much died out I didn’t go so often, but Vinyl’s comeback was just gaining pace when the store was closed.
The grand opening was at 9am on Friday morning, and they were giving away goodie bags to the first twenty five people who bought something. On a non-work day I’m not usually out of the house before eight very often, but I was this morning and got to the store about twenty past eight.
I was tenth in the queue outside the front door. By the time the staff came down to have their opening day pictures taken, and the local press had arrived to document the opening, I looked around and the queue was strung out behind me towards Memorial Gardens and the back was out of sight.
There was no stampede when the doors opened to let customers in. Everyone went up on the escalator in an orderly fashion. I went straight to the vinyl, found a Prince box set I didn’t have and headed to the till. By then, stampede mentality had kicked in and people were running to get into the queue for the till. I’d grabbed one item I’d really wanted and headed to the till, but people were picking up the first thing they could see to get in the queue to pay and get one of the goodie bags.
I was fifteenth in this queue and so I did get a goodie bag (two Star Wars t-shirts, a couple of key rings, a bobble head figure, notepad, pen, baseball cap, Japanese candy, and a tube pop), so definitely worth getting up early.
Then it was time to do some proper shopping. The first three Prodigy albums on vinyl, a Kinks box set, a Factory Records box set, a couple of books, a t-shirt, and a couple of other pieces later, it was an expensive morning.
But none of the box sets were as much as my most expensive single item purchase. i made that way back in 1988, from that HMV by the side of Leicester market. The twelve disc “The History Of The House Sound Of Chicago” set me back one hundred and twenty quid back then.
I’ll be happy if I’m still buying box sets of vinyl from HMV in another thirty-four years from now. Let’s hope they survive in Crawley in this new store.