My favourite shop has died . . .
publication date: Aug 11, 2007
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Hi
My favourite shop has died . . .
Disque Records on Chapel Market in Islington London
has closed the shutters for the last time.
This shop epitomised what makes a great customer
experience . . . the staff were passionate and highly
knowledgeable without being snooty . . . they stocked
a great range of music outside of the mainstream . . .
specialising in funk, reggae, techno, hip-hop, rare
groove and world music . . . they often had
promotional CDs months before the official releases.
They also undercut the mainstream HMV and Borders
by a couple of quid each CD. The shop was always
busy and had a great word of mouth reputation in
North London.
But then, a couple of months ago, things seemed to be
going wrong . . .
The opening hours, already very long, extended until
midnight on Friday and Saturday! They never quite
had the CDs I was looking for when months before
they would always stock it . . . the staff seemed less
interested in helping out and didn't really have that
same passion of before.
The final straw was a unexpected 50% sale of
everything in the shop - they claimed it was for a
'stock taking', but in retrospect it seems to have been a
desperate attempt to generate cash flow into what must
have been a financial hole.
A few days later . . . the shutters were pulled down for
the last time.
In the wake of POP and many other discount CD shops
closing, it really does seem like the end of the bricks
and mortar record store.
Of course the reasons for this are no mystery. Online
sales of music are at all times high with iTunes and
other music download sites grabbing a huge market
share. And we can't forget the impact that many illegal
and semi-legal file sharing programmes.
Truth is, the old bricks and mortar record store can no
longer compete in what has been described as the era
of Long Tail economics. A recent book - The Long
Tail by ChrisAnderson, the editor in Chief of Wired
magazine - highlighted this seismic shift in retailing
where online aggregators (think Amazon, eBay,
iTunes, Lovefilm etc) are able to carry far more stock
than a regular retail store ever could.
For example, online music retailer Rhapsody stocks
more than 800,000 tracks for download across every
conceivable music genre, niche and sub niche. And
they are actually making money from all of them!
Compare that to my record store. They stocked
perhaps 20,000 titles maximum, probably less. Even if
they had space for more (they didn't), the cost of
stocking those extra CDs would not be financially
viable. They simply wouldn't be able to sell enough
per month to justify their shelf space. OK, so buying
online is not going to provide the unique ambience of
the traditional shop, but the massive choice and
convenience create a far more efficient experience.
What does this mean for us? Well, it proves that there
is money to be made online by serving even the
smallest niches . . .
In fact, I've already found one and I'm going to share
it with you!
You see all this leads me nicely into the results of the
recent poll - if you recall I asked for your votes
between 2 business opportunities that would replace
the ill-fated Bank Charges Blueprint that appeared in
the Summer Fast Cash Compendium.
Well the counts are in and . . . it's a tie! Bar a few
votes between them, it's impossible to call.
However, I have decided to include the blueprint that
could best be described as a 'fast cash' opportunity -
and that must be exploiting the discrepancies on the
price comparison sites.
Now, regular readers of my hard copy newsletter will
be getting their hands on this today and I am sure will
be frantically searching the likes of Kelkoo and
Pricerunner for what are amazing profit opportunities.
How much could you make? Well let me give you a
few examples . . .
I could have bought the popular Prison Break Series
One DVD's from HMV £24.99, sold them on
Play.com Trade for £44.00 and made £20 each.
I could have bought a Tom-Tom Satnav from PC
World for £155 and flogged it on Play.com for £179
and pocketed £24 per unit.
Or, even better, I could have bought that swish Sony
LCD TV from Pixmania for £485 and sold it on eBay
for £644 and walked away with a cool £159!
And there are literally thousands of other quick profit
spinners you could be exploiting right now.
I'm off for a long weekend break in Somerset, but will
be back Wednesday and will sort out the newly
updated Fastcash Compendium for you then!
Best regards
Nick
PS: I knew that Pegasus racing System was good, but
after I sent my email last week I got this email from
one very happy punter:
"Nick - I signed up for this some time ago following
your recommendation.
I can confirm that it is a first class service and my
initial bank of £1000 has more than doubled so that I
now make an average £50 per day profit.
JohnHammer offers superb customer service and has
always replied to my E-mails easily within 24 hrs. If it
helps quite happy to endorse the product as a current
happy user. (I wish I knew the secret of his system!!)
Regards NickCarpenter"
For full details click here