Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Retail Record shop |
Founded | Glasgow, Scotland, UK; 1981 |
Headquarters | London, England, UK |
Number of locations | 105 shops (at peak) 8 shops (2014–2019) 6 shops (2020–present) |
Area served | United Kingdom |
Key people | Gordon Montgomery, Founder |
Products | CDs, vinyl records, DVDs, books, café |
Owner | Sunrise Records [lower-alpha 1] |
Website | www |
Fopp is a British chain of retail shops selling music, film, books and other entertainment products in the United Kingdom. The chain's stores are operated by Sunrise Records, but with the Fopp brand being used under license from JD Sports. [1]
The company was setup by Englishman Gordon Montgomery and began as a one-man stall in Glasgow, Scotland in 1981. [2] The name "Fopp" comes from the title of a song by the Ohio Players on their 1975 album Honey .[ citation needed ]
By 2007, Fopp had expanded to become a chain of over 100 branches in the UK. [3] With the demise of rival chain Music Zone, Fopp became the third largest specialist music retailer in the UK in terms of shop numbers (after HMV and Virgin Megastores).
Having taken over rival chain Music Zone following its fall into administration, Fopp found itself with cash flow problems. The company cancelled book deliveries in June blaming a change in location of warehouse from Bristol to Stockport (the old Music Zone warehouse).
On 21 June 2007, the company began accepting only cash transactions, stating card authorisation problems as the cause. [4] On 22 June 2007 the company closed all branches for 'stocktaking' and said it was in talks with its bank. A week later the company announced a temporary closure in all its outlets and its online venture, and staff were informed that they would not be receiving their monthly pay. [3]
On 29 June 2007, Fopp called in receivers after a last-ditch deal that would have allowed Sir Richard Branson a way to devolve himself from the loss making Virgin Megastores without the negative PR of closing down multiple locations, but this deal failed to win support from Virgin's main supplier. The shops were closed, and staff were sent home with their monthly salaries unpaid. [3]
The Fopp website was taken down shortly afterwards and replaced with the following message:
"It is with great regret that we announce the closure of Fopp.
Our store chain is profitable, well regarded and loved by our loyal customers and staff. However we have failed to gain the necessary support from major stakeholders, suppliers and their credit insurers to generate sufficient working capital to run our expanding business.
We would like to thank staff and customers for their support over the past 25 years.
Any outstanding website orders have now been cancelled and will not be fulfilled or charged."
— Fopp closure announcement, 29 June 2007
Ernst & Young was appointed as joint administrator of Fopp and Music Zone, and issued a press statement detailing shops closed and the numbers of jobs lost at each location. [5]
On 31 July 2007, it was announced that HMV would take control of the Fopp brand and its shops in Cambridge, Edinburgh Rose Street (but not Cockburn Street), Glasgow, London Covent Garden, Manchester and Nottingham. [6] On 12 February 2008, Bristol Evening Post reported that a further shop would open in Bristol (in a former HMV-owned Waterstone's store), a city in which three Fopp shops had traded prior to summer 2007.
On 24 August 2007, the Glasgow Union Street and Edinburgh stores reopened. The Cambridge shop reopened on 25 August 2007, and the Manchester shop was relaunched on the 27th. After a statement from HMV stating that it was unable to open the Covent Garden London branch, it finally gained the landlord's consent to take over the lease and the shop reopened on 5 October 2007. Only around 10% of the original 700 employees kept their jobs.
It was also announced that the Leamington Spa shop would be reopening as Head, a separate shop from Fopp, but retaining Fopp's stock and assets. [7] The Head shop opened on 1 November 2007 and employed some of its predecessor's former employees. The shop intends to host regular performances from local bands, and hopes to allow musicians, artists and authors from Leamington and its surrounding areas to sell their work there. This was initially a single shop, but has more recently expanded into a chain of four sites.
In 2009, the HMV shop in Exeter, Devon, was rebranded as a new Fopp shop while HMV moved to a new building in the redeveloped Princesshay Shopping Centre. [8] Also in August 2010, HMV opened a new Fopp store on the ground floor of the Waterstone's store in Gower Street, London. On 30 January 2011, HMV closed the Fopp shop in Exeter due to poor sales in the recent reform of HMV. It was the first Fopp shop to close under the HMV banner. In January 2014, Fopp announced it would be closing the London Gower Street branch within Waterstone's on 18 January 2014, with the remaining business transferring to the Covent Garden branch. [9]
At their peak under HMV ownership, nine shops were trading as Fopp. [10]
On 15 January 2013 Fopp, along with its parent company HMV went into administration. [11] HMV was bought out of administration by Hilco UK on 5 April 2013 saving Fopp's nine remaining shops. [12]
On 28 December 2018, HMV confirmed it had again been placed into administration, which Hilco UK cited the "tsunami" of retail competition as the reason for the move. [13] On 5 February 2019, Canadian record shop chain Sunrise Records announced its acquisition of HMV Retail Ltd. from Hilco UK for an undisclosed amount, but at the cost of closing 26 locations, including four Fopp shops, leaving only six shops trading under the name. In January 2020 the Byres Road shop in Glasgow closed leaving only five stores. [14]
The first Fopp shop was a market stall in Decourcey's Arcade near Byres Road in Glasgow opened 1981 by Gordon Montgomery. [15] Fopp operated a "keep-it-simple" approach to the pricing of its merchandise, with most prices rounded to whole-pound figures. It built a reputation for reasonable prices on new releases, and competitive prices (often £5) on non-mainstream catalogue CDs, DVDs and books. The company also had a policy called "suck it and see", whereby any purchase could be returned to the shop within 28 days for a full refund as long as it was as new.
As of 2020, Fopp has five shops across England and Scotland - London Covent Garden, Manchester, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Glasgow Union Street. [16] Until 2007 there were 50 Fopp shops and 37 outlets branded as Music Zone throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Fopp appeared in The Scotsman's list of the 250 Biggest Scottish Companies of 2005. [17] In February 2019 it was announced that the shops in Oxford, Bristol, Manchester and Byres Road will close, [18] however the store in Manchester reopened soon after, in May 2019. [19]
In June 2024 the first new Fopp store to open in several years was launched in Nottingham: the new store is located on Bridlesmith Gate. [20]
His Master's Voice (HMV) was the name of a major British record label created in 1901 by The Gramophone Co. Ltd. The phrase was coined in the late 1890s from the title of a painting by English artist Francis Barraud, which depicted a dog named Nipper listening to a wind-up disc gramophone and tilting his head. In the original, unmodified 1898 painting, the dog was listening to a cylinder phonograph. The painting was also famously used as the trademark and logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company, later known as RCA Victor. The painting was originally offered to James Hough, manager of Edison-Bell in London, but he declined, saying "dogs don't listen to phonographs". Barraud subsequently visited The Gramophone Co. of Maiden Lane in London where the manager William Barry Owen offered to purchase the painting if it were revised to depict their latest Improved Gramophone model. Barraud obliged, and Owen bought the painting from Barraud for £100.
Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
Xtra-vision was a video, film and music retailer that operated across the island of Ireland. Founded in 1979, it had 200 shops at its peak before running into financial difficulties, changing ownership a number of times, and ultimately closing in 2021.
HMV is a British music and entertainment retailer, founded in 1921. The brand is owned by JD Sports and operated by Sunrise Records, except in Japan, where it is owned and operated by Lawson.
Ottakar's was a chain of bookshops in the United Kingdom founded in 1987 by James Heneage. Following a takeover by the HMV Group in 2006, the chain was merged into the Waterstone's brand.
Habitat is a brand of household furnishings in the United Kingdom and the main homewares brand within the Sainsbury's group.
House of Fraser and Frasers are a British department store chain with 26 locations across the United Kingdom and 2 in Ireland, part of Frasers Group. It was established in Glasgow, Scotland in 1849 as Arthur and Fraser. By 1891, it was known as Fraser & Sons. The company grew steadily during the early 20th century and in 1936 began a period of growth through acquisition which would continue for over forty years. House of Fraser Ltd was incorporated in 1941 and first listed on the London Stock Exchange six years later.
Peckham's is the trading name of a chain of delicatessens and cafes in Scotland. Peckham's advertised itself as a vintners, victuallers and delicatessen company, and also offered luxury hampers & gifts online.
Music Zone was a music retailer in the United Kingdom, formed in Levenshulme in 1984, as a market stall in Longsight, Manchester.
Dillons was a British bookseller founded in 1936, named after its founder and owner Una Dillon. Originally based in Bloomsbury in London, the company expanded under subsequent owners Pentos in the 1980s into a bookselling chain across the United Kingdom. In 1995 Pentos went into receivership and sold Dillons to Thorn EMI, which immediately closed 40 of the 140 Dillons bookstore locations. Of the remaining 100 stores, most kept the name Dillons, while the remainder were Hatchards and Hodges Figgis. Within Thorn EMI, Dillons was placed in the HMV Group, which had been a division of Thorn EMI since 1986. EMI demerged from Thorn in August 1996, and Dillons-HMV remained an EMI holding. Dillons was subsumed under rival chain Waterstones' branding in 1999, at which point the brand ceased to exist.
Rough Trade is a retail chain of record shops in the United Kingdom and the United States with headquarters in London.
Andy's Records was a UK music retailer that traded from 1969 to 2003. Based in Bury St Edmunds, its roots were in nearby Felixstowe and Cambridge.
Hodges Figgis is a long-operating bookshop in central Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1768, it is probably the third-oldest functioning bookshop in the world, after the Livraria Bertrand of Lisbon (1732) and Pennsylvania's Moravian Book Shop (1745). It was moved and expanded numerous times, and arrived at 56 Dawson Street in 1979, and gradually expanded to take its current form of four floors at 56-58 Dawson Street in 1992. It is mentioned in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses, at the time of which it would have been situated at 104 Grafton Street, and the novel Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, and in other writings.
A record shop or record store is a retail outlet that sells recorded music. Per the name, in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, record shops only sold gramophone records. But over the course of the 20th century, record shops sold the new formats that were developed, such as eight track tapes, compact cassettes and compact discs (CDs). Today, in the 21st century, record stores mainly sell CDs, vinyl records and, in some cases, DVDs of movies, TV shows, cartoons and concerts. Some record stores also sell music-related items such as posters of bands or singers, related clothing items and even merchandise such as bags and coffee mugs.
Krispy Kreme UK is the United Kingdom subsidiary of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, an American company. The UK headquarters are in Camberley, Surrey.
Borders (UK) Ltd., also known as Borders & Books etc., was established as a Borders Group subsidiary in 1998, and in 2007 became independent of the US parent company. At its peak after separation from the US parent, it traded from its 41 Borders and 28 BOOKS etc. shops with over one million square feet of retail space, taking around 8% of the retail bookselling market. In 2008 and 2009 the store numbers were reduced before the collapse of the chain. They also operated one single branch in Ireland, but closed this early in 2009. On 26 November 2009 it was announced that Borders (UK) had gone into administration. All stores closed on 24 December 2009.
A Wear was a chain of women's clothing stores with a wide number of operations across Ireland. The brand also operated internationally through its website through a number of units in Great Britain. It ceased trading in January 2014.
Head Records Limited is a British entertainment retailer based in Leamington Spa. It was founded in October 2007 by Leslie and Jayne Whitfield, and became a chain in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Sunrise Records and Entertainment Ltd. is a Canadian record store chain based in Hamilton, Ontario. Currently owned by Doug Putman, it currently operates in nine Canadian provinces. Originally operating with only 9 locations in Ontario, the chain announced a major expansion in February 2017, under which it purchased leases for 70 locations formerly occupied by HMV Canada. The chain runs approximately 85 locations across Canada.
Douglas Robert Putman is a billionaire Canadian businessman, predominately trading in the retail sector across North America and Europe. Through his firm, Putman Investments, he owns numerous retail chains involving music, entertainment, toys and home goods.