Free Record Shop  Free Record Shop branch in The Hague (2008) |
| Company type | Retail |
|---|
| Industry | Retail |
|---|
| Founded | 1971 |
|---|
| Founder | Hans Breukhoven |
|---|
| Defunct | 2014 |
|---|
| Headquarters | , |
|---|
Area served | Benelux |
|---|
| Products | Entertainment media & services |
|---|
| Owner | Hans Breukhoven |
|---|
Free Record Shop was a chain of home entertainment stores selling products such as CDs, DVDs and video games, founded by Hans Breukhoven. Its first store opened on 15 October 1971 in Schiedam, Netherlands. At its peak, the franchise had more than 200 stores in the Netherlands and Belgium, but online available music and media supplanted the sale of physical media carriers.
It owned the entertainment products retail chain vanLeest, an Amsterdam-based flagship entertainment store called FAME, a gamestore chain called GameMania and several Build-a-Bear Workshop stores. The company operated multiple online stores using the different brand names.
In March 2008 the company announced that they had sold off the Norwegian and Finnish operations to GameStop, in order to concentrate on the Benelux market. [1]
In January 2012 the company licensed its websites to be fully managed and run by ECI Nederland BV, known for its labels ECI and Cosmox, making ECI the 2nd biggest online retailer in books and home entertainment in the Benelux. [2]
On 24 May 2013 staff and personnel were informed that Free Record Shop had declared bankruptcy. On May 28, the bankruptcy was accepted by a Dutch court. On 22 April 2014 Free Record Shop was finally declared bankrupt. [3]
A video rental shop/store is a physical retail business that rents home videos such as movies, prerecorded TV shows, video game cartridges/discs and other media content. Typically, a rental shop conducts business with customers under conditions and terms agreed upon in a rental agreement or contract, which may be implied, explicit, or written. Many video rental stores also sell previously viewed movies and/or new, unopened movies.
Blockbuster is an American multimedia brand. The business was founded by David Cook in 1985 as a single home video rental shop, but later became a public store chain featuring video game rentals, DVD-by-mail, streaming, video on demand, and cinema theater. The company expanded internationally throughout the 1990s. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster employed 84,300 people worldwide and operated 9,094 stores.
Toys "R" Us is an American toy, clothing, and baby product retailer owned by Tru Kids and various others. The company was founded in 1948; its first store was built in April 1948, with its headquarters located in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area.
Albert Heijn, often abbreviated to AH and informally to Appie, is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands with a market share of 34.8% in 2020. It was founded in 1887, and has been part of Ahold Delhaize since 2016.
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.
Tower Records is an international retail franchise and online music store that was formerly based in Sacramento, California, United States. From 1960 until 2006, Tower operated retail stores in the United States, which closed when Tower Records filed for bankruptcy and liquidation. Tower Records was purchased by a separate entity and was not affected by the retail store closings.
Consumers Distributing was a catalogue store in Canada and the United States that operated from 1957 to 1996. At its peak, the company operated 243 outlets in Canada and 217 in the United States; these included stores in every province in Canada and in the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California and Nevada.
The Musicland Group, Inc. was an entertainment company that ran Musicland, Sam Goody, Discount Records, Suncoast Motion Picture Company, On Cue, and the Media Play Superstore Chains. The Musicland Group was purchased by Best Buy in 2001 at the height of Musicland's success, which ultimately led to its demise. Jack Eugster was the CEO of The Musicland Group, from 1980, until February 2001. Its headquarters were in Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Hastings Entertainment was an American retail chain that sold books, movies, music, and video games and functioned as a video rental shop. As of 2016 it had 126 superstores, which were mainly located in the South Central United States, Rocky Mountain States, and in parts of the Great Plains and Midwestern states. Hastings Entertainment stores were also located in many college towns in the U.S. Hastings Entertainment was headquartered in Amarillo, Texas.
De Slegte is an Almere, Netherlands-based store chain that sells and buys new books, secondhand books and study books. Between 1 July 2013 and 19 March 2014 De Slegte and another chain of bookstores, Selexyz, combined forces as Polare. After Polare Nederland went bankrupt in 2014, the Belgian branches were bought back by the De Slegte family and changed to their original names. Four branches in Belgium continue to operate, three branches in the Netherlands were added.
Dixons is a Dutch chain of stores specialising in what it refers to as leisure time electronics. This means that Dixons does not sell products like washing machines or televisions but does provide things like digital cameras, PC's, MP3 players, gaming consoles and mobile phones.
Mars Music, Inc. was a chain of music stores based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The company was founded in 1996 by guitarist and former Office Depot president Mark Begelman, who created the superstore store chain after experiencing dissatisfaction with his own music store shopping experiences. MARS was initially an acronym for "Music And Recording Superstore." At its peak following an aggressive expansion plan, Mars Music consisted of 49 stores in 20 states and was the second largest company of its kind in the US, but the company went out of business in late 2002 after over-expansion, struggles to raise additional capital, and a failed reorganization attempt.
The Netherlands' mainstream video games market, not taking into consideration the serious and casual games, is the sixth largest in Europe. In 2008, the Dutch market took up 3.95% of the entire European market in total sales and 4.19% in software sales.
Sears Holdings Corporation was an American holding company headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the parent company of the chain stores Kmart and Sears and was founded after the former purchased the latter in 2005. It was the 20th-largest retailing company in the United States in 2015. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, and sold its assets to ESL Investments in 2019. The new owner moved Sears assets to its newly formed subsidiary Transformco.
Virgin Megastores was a retail chain that operated in the United Kingdom from 1971 to 2007. The company was established by Richard Branson, originally as a small record shop, and became a national chain. In 2007, the company was sold to management, and was rebranded as Zavvi. Zavvi entered administration in 2008 and subsequently closed.
Videoland is a Dutch OTT online service provider owned by RTL Nederland. Originally it was a retail chain of video rental stores. Its main competitor is Netflix. Videoland is registrered as a VOD-service in Luxembourg; hence the law of Luxembourg applies to Videoland.
Intertoys is a Dutch chain of stores founded in 1976 that specialises in toys, multimedia and electronics. It is headquartered in Amsterdam.
