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Wrap Exclusive: Virgin Megastores to Close in U.S., CEO Simon Wright Confirms

The six remaining retail stores will shutter by this summer, signaling the end to a once-dominant consumer retail behemoth.

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If you wanted to launch something big, Virgin Times Square was the location.”

 

“It’s bad for all labels. But like everything else, we’ll find other avenues to sell product.”

 

But Suarez is optimistic about the fate of physical record stores. “I think there’s still a large business to be had in the physical space. Everybody is very quick to end it, especially in the press. For years, everybody has predicted the date of the end of the physical CD, and yet today we’re still selling CDs,” he noted.

 

“It’s just a real shame that there will no longer be a Virgin Megastore.”


 

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Comments

The hubris of Richard Branson's publicity machine is charming, it seems many of those charmed are reporters who are happy to lift all their background material from whatever his PR people provide.free games

Thank you for link to website.

Widely known to whom? Virgin Execs? Mr. Branson?

By mirc
mirc
Turkçe mirc
mirc indir

I know my little chat brother has set up a photo booth at yonja birthday parties and gives away the photos dini sohbet as party favors.You can have people make a RFL banner to chat siteleri use as a backdrop.Have a digital camera, a few memory cards, and a photo printer on site. You can easily charge sohbet $5 a photo. That will be enough to cover your cost for the ink and still make a significant profit to give to ACS almanya sohbet

I Can't Believe That Virgin Mega Store Has Completely Shut Down For Good. It's A Real Disaster For Us All. And Truely A Shame. Why Did It All Have To Come
Down To This? Virgin Mega Store Didn't Have To Close. But Since It Did, All I
Can Say Is "Good Bye Virgin Mega Store". We Will All Miss You Like We All Miss
Michael Jackson.

Virgin Megastore was a victim of it's on size. If the stores were smaller, I suspect that this would never have happened.

100 corporate jobs and 3 more large retail stores closing, exactly what LA needs. I really liked the Hollywood location, but I won't lie I never purchased anything there. The Orange and Ontario stores weren't anything special but have left big holes in those shopping centers. Less competition for Amoeba in LA and SF. Maybe this will be a chance for Amoeba to grow.

ss

Virgin USA was no behemoth.

If you wanted to launch a record that had a budget due to UK chart success Virgin was the go to place to unload that marketing budget and perhaps spend a week in the high 70's of the US top 100 albums.

Pull out circulars like those of Target, Circuit City, Wal Mart or Best Buy in print media was never an option for Virgin, they just didn't have a big enough US presence. The 100 plus store retailers could strong arm major labels like Island Def Jam to drop list prices to $10 in exchange for initial orders that would enable records to ship gold.

So is Jerry saying Virgin was a great place to rack product on attractive fixtures that would photograph well and generate some release week buzz outside of trad music biz media outlets? That buzz had a value greater than all the line item costs of staging a product launch at Virgin, and it probably was a great recruiting tool for a legion on non unionized employees.

The hubris of Richard Branson's publicity machine is charming, it seems many of those charmed are reporters who are happy to lift all their background material from whatever his PR people provide.

Remember virginmega.com? Branson and Virgin completely failed to transcend the brand to the online arena.

What I'd like to know more about is whether there was a direct correlation between the retailer's focus on California, and then the subsequent launching of the domestic airline and the basing of it's hub in the same state, and what the real politics of these dealings were and of course the potential corresponding sex drugs and rock n roll.

It's just plain sad that Manhattan, all of NYC in fact, will no longer have a large music retailer. The indie shops are fantastic but none of them can stock as much as Virgin and Tower did. Someone somewhere must be able to make money with this. Look at Amoeba in L.A. There's a huge market for a well run music shop especially with kids buying vinyl again.

I'm not surprised, especially after I got an e-mail from Virgin this week saying their VIP Club was ending this month. Apparel was the only thing I've bought at a Virgin Megastore in the last 5 years, and it's been a year or two since I even bought that there. Everything was so overpriced.

Who knew, you ask? Well, the NA closings were hinted at when Branson sold the stores in Brit and Ireland to a management group last year. Billboard had it Jan. 14 that the NA stores were in danger, and SF Weekly mentioned it on Feb. 26 as part of a story on a store closing there. As the company closed its stores in other states last year and earlier this year, and announced the closing of the Times Square store, it became obvious that the NA group of stores was closing. Oh yea, and when they hired a consultant to find a buyer for the chain last September and there were no suitors, the handwriting was on the wall for those who could read it.

More unsourced bullshit.

They were a 'behemoth?'

What % of the market did they command?

Bigger than K-Mart?

Success in the business is not measured by high profile, nor square footage.

Shitty reporting.

I work at Virgin...this is really tough of us..most of us have been here 5+ years. It was a great company.

Yes! We need her nasty snark on this!

This decision has been driven by the real estate of the business against uniquely bad economic background. To my knowledge -far from struggling the business has remained profitable until the closure of Times Square - a testament to the hundreds of employees in the company.

Widely known to whom? Virgin Execs? Mr. Branson?

Not an exclusive. Not a surprise. It's been widely known the chain was closing it's stores.

Someone should alert Ms. Finke!

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Comments

The hubris of Richard Branson's publicity machine is charming, it seems many of those charmed are reporters who are happy to lift all their background material from whatever his PR people provide.free games

Thank you for link to website.

Widely known to whom? Virgin Execs? Mr. Branson?

By mirc
mirc
Turkçe mirc
mirc indir

I know my little chat brother has set up a photo booth at yonja birthday parties and gives away the photos dini sohbet as party favors.You can have people make a RFL banner to chat siteleri use as a backdrop.Have a digital camera, a few memory cards, and a photo printer on site. You can easily charge sohbet $5 a photo. That will be enough to cover your cost for the ink and still make a significant profit to give to ACS almanya sohbet

I Can't Believe That Virgin Mega Store Has Completely Shut Down For Good. It's A Real Disaster For Us All. And Truely A Shame. Why Did It All Have To Come
Down To This? Virgin Mega Store Didn't Have To Close. But Since It Did, All I
Can Say Is "Good Bye Virgin Mega Store". We Will All Miss You Like We All Miss
Michael Jackson.

Virgin Megastore was a victim of it's on size. If the stores were smaller, I suspect that this would never have happened.

100 corporate jobs and 3 more large retail stores closing, exactly what LA needs. I really liked the Hollywood location, but I won't lie I never purchased anything there. The Orange and Ontario stores weren't anything special but have left big holes in those shopping centers. Less competition for Amoeba in LA and SF. Maybe this will be a chance for Amoeba to grow.

ss

Virgin USA was no behemoth.

If you wanted to launch a record that had a budget due to UK chart success Virgin was the go to place to unload that marketing budget and perhaps spend a week in the high 70's of the US top 100 albums.

Pull out circulars like those of Target, Circuit City, Wal Mart or Best Buy in print media was never an option for Virgin, they just didn't have a big enough US presence. The 100 plus store retailers could strong arm major labels like Island Def Jam to drop list prices to $10 in exchange for initial orders that would enable records to ship gold.

So is Jerry saying Virgin was a great place to rack product on attractive fixtures that would photograph well and generate some release week buzz outside of trad music biz media outlets? That buzz had a value greater than all the line item costs of staging a product launch at Virgin, and it probably was a great recruiting tool for a legion on non unionized employees.

The hubris of Richard Branson's publicity machine is charming, it seems many of those charmed are reporters who are happy to lift all their background material from whatever his PR people provide.

Remember virginmega.com? Branson and Virgin completely failed to transcend the brand to the online arena.

What I'd like to know more about is whether there was a direct correlation between the retailer's focus on California, and then the subsequent launching of the domestic airline and the basing of it's hub in the same state, and what the real politics of these dealings were and of course the potential corresponding sex drugs and rock n roll.

It's just plain sad that Manhattan, all of NYC in fact, will no longer have a large music retailer. The indie shops are fantastic but none of them can stock as much as Virgin and Tower did. Someone somewhere must be able to make money with this. Look at Amoeba in L.A. There's a huge market for a well run music shop especially with kids buying vinyl again.

I'm not surprised, especially after I got an e-mail from Virgin this week saying their VIP Club was ending this month. Apparel was the only thing I've bought at a Virgin Megastore in the last 5 years, and it's been a year or two since I even bought that there. Everything was so overpriced.

Who knew, you ask? Well, the NA closings were hinted at when Branson sold the stores in Brit and Ireland to a management group last year. Billboard had it Jan. 14 that the NA stores were in danger, and SF Weekly mentioned it on Feb. 26 as part of a story on a store closing there. As the company closed its stores in other states last year and earlier this year, and announced the closing of the Times Square store, it became obvious that the NA group of stores was closing. Oh yea, and when they hired a consultant to find a buyer for the chain last September and there were no suitors, the handwriting was on the wall for those who could read it.

More unsourced bullshit.

They were a 'behemoth?'

What % of the market did they command?

Bigger than K-Mart?

Success in the business is not measured by high profile, nor square footage.

Shitty reporting.

I work at Virgin...this is really tough of us..most of us have been here 5+ years. It was a great company.

Yes! We need her nasty snark on this!

This decision has been driven by the real estate of the business against uniquely bad economic background. To my knowledge -far from struggling the business has remained profitable until the closure of Times Square - a testament to the hundreds of employees in the company.

Widely known to whom? Virgin Execs? Mr. Branson?

Not an exclusive. Not a surprise. It's been widely known the chain was closing it's stores.

Someone should alert Ms. Finke!

NEW COMMENT

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <i> <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <p>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options