After getting over the initial shock of hearing the news that Sam the Record Man had filed for bankruptcy, my thoughts turned to more selfish pursuits -- the impending clearance sales. Yes!
I know nothing about how Sam's was run as a business, but as a music store, nobody viewed their downtown superstore in the same way after HMV opened up down the street in 1991. Sam's was basically a big warehouse that happened to sell a lot of good music. The opening of HMV was an event, and the store was a spectacle in itself. It was sleek and high-tech, brilliant blue facades, four floors of music and greyish-silver steel -- it was more like a dance club than a music store, and people went to see it regardless of their interest in music. It's like when a new sports arena opens, such as with SkyDome in 1989, everybody asked everybody else "have you been to SkyDome yet?". It became the newest location that everybody just had to visit, if only to say that they'd stepped foot inside and nothing more.
Competition between the mega-chains drove prices down. I had no complaints. But for years, HMV remained the sexy new store, while Sam's and nearby Sunrise were just big white boxes.
Sam's eventually opened a dance and R&B-oriented second floor, but it never took off. They renovated a couple of times, most notably the front, with it's cramped layout and cash register placement nearly indistinguishable from a supermarket checkout. But the overall look stayed the same. Sunrise eventually smartened up and completely overhauled their interior, with a flashier, more HMV-ish concept in mind. They continued to offer loads of discounted CD's, and their selection improved. Sam's basically stayed the same.
I'm biased, but I came to rely on HMV because they, in my mind, led the way for major chains selling dance music and British import CD's (probably because they are a British company). Ironically, in the last couple of years, Sam's did develop a rather impressive selection of techno, but HMV built theirs up around 1994, a very large head start. Those were Sam's problems in a convenient microcosm. They cited competition from online retailers and local chains as main reasons for their demise. They admitted, really, that they'd been behind the times for quite a while.
