mjzee Posted April 10, 2014 Report Share Posted April 10, 2014 Sadly, J&R has closed their stores and laid off all employees. They still maintain a web presence. NY Daily News Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7/4 Posted April 10, 2014 Report Share Posted April 10, 2014 all I can say is wow! with the jazz and classical depts closed, I didn't have much of a reason to go there any more....but I do buy computer eq from them over the net. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidewinder Posted April 10, 2014 Report Share Posted April 10, 2014 (edited) all I can say is wow! Having seen their NYC store about 10 years ago, I agree. Same thing can be said of Tower, I guess.. Those guys had every single Free America title in the racks and most of the Blue Note Conns and Verve Elites. Not to mention not 1 but 2 of the giant 'Gitanes Jazz In Paris' boxes behind the counter. Jazz candy store. Edited April 10, 2014 by sidewinder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgcim Posted April 10, 2014 Report Share Posted April 10, 2014 Wow, that was the last big record store left in NYC. Bloomberg let commercial rents go through the roof, and all we have left is a bland, yuppified NYC. I used to love browsing at all the great record stores they had: Dayton's Colony Records Tower J&R Rockit Science Kim's Now they're all gone. NYC, the cultual capitol of the US, right... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Beat Steve Posted April 10, 2014 Report Share Posted April 10, 2014 Since the rents are so often invoked for the demise, are there in fact ANY stores of this kind anywhere that actually OWN the building (or floor) they reside in? I know there was at least one (possibly two) here in my hometown that did own their buildings, and in at least one case their closure (before the heyday of the internet) was due to gross mismanagement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MomsMobley Posted April 13, 2014 Report Share Posted April 13, 2014 remember this: J&R are scumbags and the music departments were the ONLY parts of the store that engendered substantial good will: jazz, blues, classical, international, country, oldies, pop/rock to a certain extent. There might have been a period when the video dept was also estimable but I don't think there was the same relationship(s) etc... And that said, in the last couple years, jazz was gutted and they had idiots/jerkoffs working there, albeit 'colorful,' sorta characterful jerkoffs... Steve, J&R does own numerous buildings there; their failure is due to greed, mismanagement and who knows what; they made lots of obviously ill-advised biz decisions like trying to get into children's clothes, toys, accessories crap; musical instruments; housewares. No doubt margins on music were low, volume decreased but if they had their shit together, they could have continued. They treated their employees horribly the last couple years too; note in all their bullshit spinning-- including numerous denials they were closing etc-- they mentioned almost nothing about severance packages etc. I suspect there was internal power struggle but it's totally in character for them to have closed with no notice because of their extreme fears of employee theft etc. The cameras, computers, audio equipment etc-- all those stores sucked or were at best 'functional'; they might have what you need at an OK price-- almost never 'great'-- quite possibly not and they had largely horrible sales staff & management. (The check out clerks from wide variety of foreign nations were generally OK and interesting, by comparison.) While I would pick up whatever there rather than support some awful chain with sub-ghetto service, I did so because their music departments were largely laudatory. I think some dumbass looked at the #s per square foot (the reason they would shift sections around, often unwisely) and pushed for their elimination not realizing the larger draw. Their 'superstore' shuck-- closing their Park Row storefronts and consolidating into one-- was a bad idea executed fucking horribly and with lies lies lies lies lies lies lies repeated to customers and employees alike. If they weren't "lies" per se and the Friedman family honestly didn't know what the fuck they were doing... ... what does that tell you? I'm semi-demi-suprised none of the NYC biz papers have reported seriously on the J&R collapse because it's a fascinating story of 'branding,' real estate, greed, mismanagement-- forget music for now, the poor service and buying experiences of the other sections HAD to affect their $$$. Also recent-ish idiocy like not opening up on Saturday until ** 11 AM **... the change, a cpl years ago, of not opening until 10 AM from their traditional 9 AM weekdays was also debatable but you know, anything to not pay/hire more employees. The earlier hours were great for before work jaunts or quick in/out on weekends etc. Funny too how they could have sold cameras (often crap) for decades and Joe & Rachelle Friedman don't have a photo up more recent than 20-25 years old, hah. I won't even get into the story of friend who bought a DOA iMac there years ago and they 'refused' to accept a return, they'd only offer to 'repair' it... Refused? Good thing their credit card would refuse payment too, otherwise... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7/4 Posted April 13, 2014 Report Share Posted April 13, 2014 Yes, I've heard it was a horrible place to work. I mostly just bought CDs and mail ordered computer eq. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted April 13, 2014 Report Share Posted April 13, 2014 Internet commerce has changed it all. Now not even big chains can comfortably stay afloat, Mom and Pops are taking death gasps with every other breath. Soon everything other than perishable goods and controlled things like booze will be drop shipped to your door or you can take a walk to your corner amazon depot and have it handed to you over the counter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MomsMobley Posted April 13, 2014 Report Share Posted April 13, 2014 (edited) Yah, J&R as a whole might have floundered regardless but the fact they own the buildings and have made numerous puzzling zig-zags over the last five or so years is hard to explain... i.e. better owners/management would have adopted to changes better, been more transparent, recognized they were in fact bleeding customers from any # of directions, inc. poor employee service & morale, shady/sloppy biz practices (selling refurb as new etc), onerous encounters with impolite middle management types & rent-a-cop security etc Jazzbo, as someone with audio interests, you'd be shocked (or not) that J&R went totally low-end (tho' sometimes big $$$) home theater crap etc, not even carrying better Sony and Pioneer models if you needed to pick up a reasonable priced/performance CD player... So I ended up getting an SACD-capable (for classical) Onkyo at B&H, whose continued success in electronics-- both their store and mailorder-- is counter example to J&R tanking. Currently btw J&R is running 6-7% negative feedback at Amazon and while you're sure to get x # of crackpots when you cast such a wide net... there are too many bad in-store stories for all of the internet ones to be untrue. What's curious is-- a few section rearrangements aside (i.e. 6-7 years ago they tried gutting classical, moved it into pop/rock floor with no seperation, but it was such a bad idea they moved it back... but how much time/$$$ did they waste in doing so???)-- is that the music departments were allowed to semi-flourish, even if they could never go back to late '90s/early '00s heyday. Other weird things I'd forgotten: J&R dabbled in remainedered books for a time; used CDs (store credit only, I bought a few but never dared to trade there); the absurd roll out for J&R Junior, the kids store... They bought and reno'd a corner bdlg on Park Row that used to be long-time old New York diner to expand the camera department... Now as real estate investment that will pay off but for retail, combined with getting beat on by B&H... Edited April 13, 2014 by MomsMobley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7/4 Posted April 13, 2014 Report Share Posted April 13, 2014 No doubt they fucked up.Let's see what they do next. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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