Goody Two Stores
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #106
Take a look at this screenshot of just the photo from a tweet I saw recently:
Now depending on your age, how often you go to malls, and how closely you follow the troubles of brick-and-mortar retail, you might have two reactions to this picture. One: okay, a Sam Goody store. Two: there are still any Sam Goody stores left?
Obviously, there are. This one, of course, which is in St. Clairsville, Ohio. And this one, in Medford, Oregon. Here’s a screenshot of the Google photos (no neon on this one):
And…no others. There are just two Sam Goody stores left in the United States. (Here’s a Reddit thread on them.) So here’s a screenshot of the whole tweet, from a neat mall-focused account:
Now, if you look at the Oregon store, you can see banners declaring “FYE exclusive.” That’s because the parent company of FYE—which still has over 200 stores!—bought a whole bunch of music store chains over the years, including Sam Goody. From Wikipedia:
Sam Goody was a music and entertainment retailer in the United States and United Kingdom, operated by The Musicland Group, Inc. It was purchased by Best Buy in 2000, sold to Sun Capital Partners in 2003, and filed for bankruptcy in 2006, closing most of its stores. The remaining stores were purchased by Trans World Entertainment, which also runs FYE, Saturday Matinee, and Suncoast Motion Picture Company.
So the company was basically finished, and the FYE parent, for whatever reason, kept these two stores alive. But they are, aside from the names, FYE stores. The Ohio location is very old—the logo dates to the early 1990s—so perhaps in a smaller, older mall they saw no point in paying to rebrand everything.
“Lasts” are always interesting, especially in regard to the challenges of keeping all the corporate infrastructure running—offices, logistics, store brands and centrally produced materials, etc.—as the number of stores dwindles. How does that even work? Arthur Treacher’s, the fish and chip chain, once had approximately 800 locations and now has only two, plus a handful of franchises. Or K-Mart, with three U.S. locations left. How do you scale down a massive chain’s infrastructure to almost nothing?
These Sam Goodys don’t really have that issue, do they? But maybe their signs do. When the signs stop lighting up and can’t be fixed, maybe that’s when the rebranding happens.
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A lot of formerly big chains that are now down to a location or two are often just owned by the franchisee, and the parent company no longer functionally exists, such as the now-famous Last Blockbuster on Earth in Bend, Oregon. I'm almost positive that's how it is with Arthur Treacher's. But as for, say, Kmart or Sam Goody, it really is a mystery.
I know that Chevron keeps some Standard Oil gas stations operating so they can defend their copyrights and trademarks related to the brand. Very possible that's what's going on here.